Media Center

New Common Cause report explains how drawing electoral boundaries based on citizens over age 18 advantages whites and steals representation from people of color. 

Today, after a week of confusion and contradiction in the Trump Administration, the President announced that he will not pursue a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. To protect a fair and accurate Census, the decision to not add the citizenship question is important.  However, in issuing an executive order to government agencies to hand over citizenship data, President Trump is engaging in an abusive power grab. Attorney General Barr reinforced the Administration’s intent to collect citizenship data for the purposes of reapportionment and redistricting. Using citizenship data to erase millions of people from apportionment and redistricting violates the Constitution.  

Any action by President Trump to add the citizenship question to the 2020 Census is an illegal, desperate, and ill-fated attempt to further undermine a fair and accurate national headcount. Judges in New York, California, and Maryland, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, have already rejected the Trump administration’s lies about the need for the citizenship question.  

Now that the Trump Administration’s attempted whitewash of their motives for demanding a citizenship question have been exposed, they are scrambling to contrive a new reason. As the documents of GOP gerrymanderer Thomas Hofeller turned over to attorneys in the Common Cause v. Lewis case show, the purpose of the question has always been to advantage "Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites" in redistricting to the detriment of Latinos and other families of color. Combined with recent statements by ICE officials indicating plans to use census information for immigration enforcement, the true motives - anti-Latino, racial animus - driving addition of the citizenship question is increasingly undeniable.

Today’s decision by the government to move forward with printing the 2020 Census forms without the citizenship question is a victory for a fair and accurate 2020 Census count. The Trump administration’s lies about the need for a citizenship question were suspect from the outset but they were laid bare by the facts brought to light in the documents of the GOP’s top mapmaker Thomas Hofeller. Chief Justice Roberts joined by four other justices, rightly stated that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s explanation for adding the question was “contrived.”

Statement of Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause President: “’Contrived.’ That’s what the Supreme Court called the Administration’s trumped up explanation for adding the citizenship question on the 2020 Census. In documents that Common Cause received in the North Carolina state challenge, Common Cause v. Lewis, emails and reports created by Thomas Hofeller, the chief Republican redistricting mapdrawer, reveal the real reasons for the citizenship question – to make redistricting 'advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.' Suspending the citizenship question is a step in the right direction.”