SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 3/15/2019
On April 23, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the challenge to the decision to reinstate a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. The justices had originally granted review to decide whether that decision violated federal laws governing administrative agencies, but today the justices announced that they will also consider whether the decision violates the Constitution.
The justices’ order adding the constitutional issue to the case came four days after U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco sent a letter to Scott Harris, the clerk of the Supreme Court. The letter informed Harris (and, by extension, the justices) that a federal district court in California had ruled that the addition of the citizenship question violates both federal administrative laws and the Constitution’s enumeration clause, which requires the “actual Enumeration†of the U.S. population every 10 years, to allow congressional representatives to be evenly divided among the states. The only way to finally resolve whether the federal government can bring back the citizenship question, the government stressed, is to have the justices take up the constitutional issue too:
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/03/justices-add-constitutional-question-to-citizenship-case/#more-283822
