SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 6/25/2019
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the challenge to the Trump administration’s decision to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census by the end of the week. But even as the justices presumably push to finalize their opinion in the case, new developments – both at the Supreme Court and elsewhere – relating to the discovery of new evidence could make their task more complicated.
Today the government responded to yesterday’s filing by lawyers for the civil-rights groups challenging the use of the question. In a letter from Dale Ho of the ACLU, the groups notified the justices that a federal district judge in Maryland had ruled that new evidence discovered in the files of Thomas Hofeller, a Republican redistricting strategist, had created a “substantial issue†about whether Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross had intended to discriminate against Hispanic voters. Although the Maryland case had been pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, the judge in that case, George Hazel, indicated that, if the case were returned to him, he would fast-track the Maryland plaintiffs’ discrimination and civil-rights claims. Moreover, the groups added, a new study by the Census Bureau suggested that, if the citizenship question is included on the 2020 census, the effect on the response rate for households with residents who are not U.S. citizens will be more significant than previously believed.
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/government-responds-in-census-case-4th-circuit-remands-maryland-case-for-more-fact-finding/#more-287395