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    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    Federal court rules against adding citizenship question to 2020 Census

    BY GRACE SEGERS

    MARCH 6, 2019 / 3:40 PM / CBS NEWS

    Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Enumeration Clause, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. Judge Richard Seeborg of the Northern District of California ruled that the question was "quite effective at depressing self-response rates among immigrants and noncitizens, and poses a significant risk of distorting the apportionment of congressional representation among the states."

    "In short, the inclusion of the citizenship question on the 2020 Census threatens the very foundation of our democratic system," Seeborg wrote in his decision. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra had challenged the question, arguing that adding a citizenship question would discourage undocumented immigrants from responding, which could therefore affect the state's congressional representation.

    Seeborg agreed with that rationale, calling the addition of the question "arbitrary and capricious." He also said that the question "affirmatively interferes with the actual enumeration and fulfills no reasonable governmental purpose," therefore violating the Enumeration Clause, which calls for the regular counting of American citizens. He was convinced by California's expert witness testimony that the inclusion of the question could result in a 5.8 percent estimate of nonresponse by noncitizen households, which would make it 50 percent more likely that California could lose a congressional seat.

    However, Seeborg said that future citizenship and other demographic questions may be deemed constitutional, as long as they have a clear justification.

    "Where the inclusion of a particular question will degrade the accuracy of the Census to the point where the proper apportionment of representatives among the states is at risk, the government must identify a legitimate governmental purpose that is sufficiently weighty to justify this significant harm to the census," he wrote.

    The Supreme Court agreed to take up a case on the citizenship question in February, which could allow the question to be included. A district court judge in New York ordered the Trump administration to drop the question in January.

    For now, however, California has been handed a victory.

    "Justice has prevailed for each and every Californian who should raise their hands to be counted in the 2020 Census without being discouraged by a citizenship question," Becerra said in a statement. "We celebrate this ruling, an important step in protecting billions of dollars meant for critical services Californians rely on, from education, to public health and safety."

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal...o-2020-census/
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    Another judicial travesty on the 2020 Census citizenship question

    A leftist San Francisco–based federal judge has gone the last federal judge one better and declared commerce secretary Wilbur Ross's request for a citizenship question on the coming 2020 Census form "unconstitutional." The judge said just the asking of it amounted to "bad faith," and as the Washington Post reported, merely asking that "broke the law."

    The administration has been on the losing end of scores of court decisions involving immigration issues since President Trump took office. But the census case has taken on special significance because it strikes at the heart of the United States' form of government and because of what Seeborg described as a "strong showing of bad faith" by a Cabinet secretary who, influenced in part by White House advisers, tried to conceal his motives.

    The cases against Ross have been brought by jurisdictions with significant immigrant populations. Only two have completed trials, the case heard by Furman and brought by 18 states led by New York, and today's challenge, initiated by the state of California and combined with a suit brought by the city of San Jose.


    The judge's reasoning wasn't some law that says you can't ask a citizenship question, but his own interpretations of Ross's motive.

    Seeborg, like Furman, found after a trial that Ross misrepresented both to the public and Congress his reasons for adding the citizenship question last March. Ross claimed he was acting at the request of the Justice Department in the interest of enforcing the Voting Rights Act.

    In reality, the "evidence establishes" that the voting rights explanation was just "a pretext" and that Ross "acted in bad faith" when he claimed otherwise.

    He pursued the citizenship question after hearing from then-White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon and Kris Kobach, the vice chair of Trump's now-disbanded voting fraud commission.


    Here's the reality: motive is irrelevant. What Ross said he wanted is one thing; he probably should have been more direct. But the right to know isn't irrelevant. And all that's being asked for in that Census questionnaire is information — information that every resident is legally bound to answer. The argument presented from the Left is that illegal aliens won't answer the Census if a citizenship question is on it, and they must be accommodated. Yet not answering is exactly what's breaking the law, not the question. Illegals have already broken immigration law by entering the U.S. illegally, setting up shop, having citizen children, and taking jobs. Many have stolen Americans' identification either to steal money or to pursue work. The fact that illegals are likely to display the same lawless attitude on the matter of answering the Census just illustrates the chain of lawlessness surrounding illegal immigration. In squelching the citizenship question, the judge is ruling that the Census should actually accommodate them, not the rest of us, and not the right to know.

    What's happening here is something that does need to be discussed in our representative democracy. Should congressional seats, all of which are allotted in approximately 300,000-sized population blocs, include seats where the majority of the residents are non-citizens? Democrats are actually sending congressional representatives to Congress based on this dynamic in California, where many of the most powerful congressmen and state assembly members have 9% to 10% voter turnout rates, owing to the gargantuan size of the illegal populations represented. Buttressed by the numbers (but not the votes) that create those districts, they go on to make decisions in Congress with the exact same power as congressmen representing legitimate citizen districts, for the rest of us. Foreign influence? You bet.

    Here's another thing: the populations in the districts is key to determining how many electoral college votes are allotted per state. California has a huge number, inflated by the large presence of illegal residents. Better still, all of the blue counties cancel out the votes of all of the red counties in the allotment of delegates. Foreigners ruling us? You bet.

    Any questions why Democrats want every illegal they can get across our unprotected border? Their entire basis of power, that little edge that puts them over the top in every election in California, is built on foreign nationals, not U.S. citizens. It's hardly different from a foreign army coming in and taking over.

    Yet all the Census question seeks is mere information so that the matter can be discussed, and it gets this blast of overkill from the judge. Note that the Census asks all kinds of intrusive questions — from income to race to whether you moved to education to emergency preparedness to whether you actually voted. But it asks nothing about citizenship, and it's putting out a $500-million "communications campaign" to beef up numbers of respondents. Its allies in the GAO have even put out a map of the Census intentions in the form of a big blue-state America. That, along with its uncooperative attitude to Ross himself, suggests there's going to be some numbers-gaming to help Democratic seat counts in this 2020 Census.

    Information. Ross just wants some information. The judge's rabid squelching of that is nothing but a bid to keep that information from getting out in the name of helping Democrats retain power. Should California be determining who should be U.S. president based on the strength of its foreign — and illegally present — population? That's what this dishonest ruling is really about. While it wouldn't hurt Ross to be more direct about it, it's what the rest of us want to know and, frankly, have a right to know.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog..._question.html
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    MW
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    Wow, California's leftist politicians and activist judges are doing their level best to rule the whole country!

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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    Second Judge Blocks Trump Administration's Census Citizenship Question Plans

    March 6, 20191:58 PM ET
    Hansi Lo Wang

    A second federal judge has issued a court order to block the Trump administration's plans to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census.

    U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg of California found that the administration's decision to add the question violated administrative law.

    The judge also ruled that it was unconstitutional because it prevents the government from carrying out its mandate to count every person living in the U.S. every 10 years.

    "In short, the inclusion of the citizenship question on the 2020 Census threatens the very foundation of our democratic system — and does so based on a self-defeating rationale," Seeborg wrote in a 126-page opinion released Wednesday.

    Plans to add the question have already been halted by an earlier ruling in New York by U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman.

    The Supreme Court is scheduled to hold a hearing about the New York ruling on April 23. This latest ruling will likely be appealed to the high court.

    The controversial question asks, "Is this person a citizen of the United States?"

    The administration argues that the Justice Department wants responses to the question to better enforce Voting Rights Act provisions that protect racial and language minorities against discrimination. In his ruling against including the question, however, Furman found that to be a "sham justification."

    Census Bureau officials have recommended against adding the question, which the federal agency's research suggests will scare noncitizens and some citizens from participating in the constitutionally mandated head count of every person living in the United States.

    The dozens of states, cities and other groups that have sued the administration over the question are concerned that it will lead to an undercount of Latinos and other communities of color. That would harm the accuracy of new population counts that play a role in determining how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes, as well as how much federal funding, each state receives after the 2020 census.

    In an email from spokesperson Kelly Laco, the Justice Department — which is representing the administration in these cases — declined to comment on Seeborg's ruling.

    Attorneys for the state of California and the city of San José — plus the other cities and groups that joined these two lead plaintiffs in the San Francisco-based lawsuits — hailed the judge's order to block the question.

    "Justice has prevailed for each and every Californian who should raise their hands to be counted in the 2020 Census without being discouraged by a citizenship question," said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose office filed the first lawsuit hours after Ross announced his decision to add the question last March.

    "The plaintiffs have proved that the justification given for the addition of the citizenship question was nothing more than a pretext to carry out the Trump Administration's racist agenda," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Her organization represented San José and Black Alliance For Just Immigration, a California-based immigrant-rights group.

    The legal battle at the district courts, however, is not over yet. Plaintiffs in two additional citizenship question lawsuits in Maryland are waiting for a ruling by U.S. District Judge George Hazel, who heard closing arguments last month.

    The judge is considering claims that by adding the question, the Trump administration intended to discriminate against immigrant communities of color and that it was part of a conspiracy within the administration to violate the constitutional rights of people of color and noncitizens.

    https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/69888...question-plans
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