Government lawyers step up effort to get a citizenship question on 2020 Census, court filing shows
The Trump administration on Friday stepped up its effort to place a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, after the president said he was mulling an executive order to deal with the impasse and Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge they were still looking for a legal way forward.
The Supreme Court has called the administration’s rationale for the question “contrived” and said the government could not go forward without a solid justification. On Friday, Trump and a key official mentioned other possible reasons for adding the query in statements that added to a week-long swirl of contradictions and that could make the administration’s legal case even more difficult.
Government lawyers said in a filing Friday that the Justice and Commerce departments had been “instructed to examine whether there is a path forward” for the question and that if one was found they would file a motion in the Supreme Court to try to get the question on the survey to be sent to every U.S. household.
Their filing came in a case before U.S. District Judge George J. Hazel in Maryland that poses the issue of whether the addition of the citizenship question would violate equal-protection guarantees and whether it is part of a conspiracy to drive down the count of minorities. He scheduled information gathering to begin immediately and conclude by Aug. 19, with any witnesses to testify in early September.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/trump-says-he-is-thinking-of-executive-order-to-revive-census-citizenship-question/2019/07/05/d3ec5986-9f20-11e9-9ed4-c9089972ad5a_story.html?utm_term=.be1e33fcce52&wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1
Emulating his hero Andrew Jackson.
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