Monday 30 / June / 2025
California: Several U.S. states and civil rights groups promised on Tuesday to stop the federal government from asking people whether they are citizens in the 2020 Census, arguing it could discourage immigrants from participating and skew the makeup of Congress.
The U.S. Commerce Department, which runs the Census Bureau, announced on Monday that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had decided to include the citizenship question.
It said he had responded to a Justice Department request based on a desire for better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities' voting rights. Ross had decided that "obtaining complete and accurate information to meet this legitimate government purpose outweighed the limited potential adverse impacts", the Commerce Department said in a statement. The state of California, which has a large immigrant population, filed a lawsuit early Tuesday in federal court against the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra asked the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California to issue a preliminary injunction and rule that the move violates the Constitution by interfering with the obligation to conduct a full count of the U.S. population.
The census, which is mandated under the U.S. Constitution and takes place every 10 years, counts every person in the United States.
It is used to determine the allocation to states of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and to distribute billions of dollars in federal funds to local communities.
The citizenship question has not been asked since 1950.
