Federal judge blocks Trump administration from adding citizenship question to 2020 Census
by Melissa Quinn
| January 15, 2019 10:03 AM
A federal judge in New York Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.
In a ruling Tuesday, Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, vacated Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to add the question to the Census questionnaire and enjoined the administration from implementing Ross’s decision.
Ross announced in March that a citizenship question would be added to the 2020 Census in an effort to ensure better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.
But the decision prompted a lawsuit from numerous states and cities, led by New York, which asked the court to stop the Trump administration from including the question on the upcoming Census.
In his ruling, Furman wrote that Ross’s rationale for adding the citizenship question was not for “enhancement of DOJ’s [Voting Rights Act] enforcement efforts, writing, “It follows that a court cannot sustain agency action founded on a pretextual or sham justification that conceals the true ‘basis’ for the decision."
Furman also said that Ross engaged in a “veritable smorgasbord of classic, clear-cut†violations of the Administrative Procedure Act.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/federal-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-adding-citizenship-question-to-2020-census