Citizenship Question on 2020 Census Blocked By Judge



The stated goal of the 2020 Census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place. A judge has ordered that a controversial question be removed from the 2020 Census.

The controversial question asked, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” Steve Murdock is a Rice University sociologist and demographer and Census Bureau director from 2007 to 2009, under President George W. Bush. He said: “I think it will have the effect of suppressing the count and it will lead people to try and stay out of the Census rather than get in it.”

If census counts are biased or flawed, it could result in states having inaccurate representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. It could also result in inadequate federal funding for state-federal programs. Those things are based on population. An inaccurate census count could also provide problems for genealogists who use census data as a source to learn about their relatives and ancestors.

In January of 2019, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman (Southern District of New York) ruled against the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

Judge Furman found that the decision by Commerce Secretary Wilber Ross to add the citizenship question to the 2020 census was “unlawful” because of “a veritable smorgasbord of classic, clear-cut” violations of the Administrative Procedure Act, including cherry-picking evidence to support his choice.

The Supreme Court of the United States decided not to hear an oral argument about the decision to add the controversial citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

Later that same month, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Grimm (District of Maryland) allowed the NAACP to pursue its legal claim that the U.S. Census Bureau has insufficient funds to properly conduct the 2020 Census, risking a massive undercount of blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities. The current funding for the 2020 Census will run out by April of 2019, if not sooner.

Related articles at FamilyTree.com:

* Questions on the U.S. Census

* The Controversial Citizenship Question on the 2020 Census

* The 2020 Census Has Funding Problems

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