The Citizenship Question

On a new episode of Versus Trump, Jason and Easha discuss lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration's decision to ask a question about citizenship on the 2020 census.

Jason and Easha start the discussion by explaining the purpose of the decennial Census and the history of the Census Bureau's collecting information about citizenship. They then discuss how and when the Trump Administration decided to add a question about citizenship on the next Census, and they explain why the addition of this question may result in a substantial undercount of people in areas with high immigrant populations—and they explain why that would be bad for diverse states like California. That leads to a discussion of the merits of the two claims in the lawsuits: that the Administration's action violates the Enumeration Clause, which requires an accurate count of all "persons" in the U.S., and that the government's actions are arbitrary and capricious. They also wonder why the challengers have not added a third claim explicitly alleging discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.

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