Attorney General William Barr believes he sees a way to legally require 2020 census respondents to declare whether or not they are citizens. This, despite a Supreme Court ruling that forbade asking that very question.
Barr says that he believes the Trump administration will take action in the coming days that will allow the government to add the controversial census question. The Supreme Court recently blocked the question, at least temporarily, saying the administration’s justification “seems to have been contrived.”President Trump had been pressing for the government to demand information about citizenship.
Experts have said that requiring that kind of information would discourage immigrants from participating in the survey and result in a less accurate count. That, in turn, would redistribute money and political power away from Democratic-led cities where immigrants tend to cluster to whiter, rural areas where Republicans do well.
Source: Wall Street Journal