image credit: wprl.org
The Trump administration’s proposed question asks, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” That’s it.
It’s
an important question. In his report “The Census Should Ask About Citizenship
to Keep House Representation of Citizens Fair,” Bryan Preston at PJ Media
concludes:
The census is at the heart of
representation in our republic. The Constitution explicitly connects the census
to representation of citizens. Citizenship has been a routine part of the
census for most of our national existence, and resuming capturing this data
ought not be controversial. Objections to the citizenship question are
speculative at best, disingenuous at worst. The citizenship question is only
controversial because like nearly everything else in American life, some want
to use the census to serve their own political power plays.
I’m no lawyer, but I don't understand why President Trump would
need to issue an Executive Order to restore the citizenship question to the
census form. The Supreme Court lobbed the issue back to the Commerce Dept. Doesn’t
that put the question back on the desk of the Secretary of Commerce? And Trump's administration has precedence on its side.
Here's Amy Howe at the SCOTUS blog:
Although the Trump administration
had hoped that the Supreme Court would clear the way for it to include such a
question, the justices instead sent the issue back to the Department of
Commerce. In a deeply fractured opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the
court’s four liberal justices in ruling that the justification that the
government offered at the time for including the citizenship question was just
a pretext. The decision left open the possibility that the Trump administration
could try again to add the citizenship question, but the clock is ticking. . .
“Pretext”
doesn’t seem to square with the history of the census citizenship question that
dates back to Thomas Jefferson (see Preston’s full article here).
But in any event, if the issue is now back at the Commerce Dept., why doesn’t
Secy. Wilbur Ross just restore the question on the census form? Just asking . .
.
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