Debates over the census are usually reserved for demographers and statisticians, but the dispute over the citizenship question is one of high politics.
with large numbers of immigrants fear that millions of households will refuse to fill out the census forms if the citizen question is included out of concern that the confidential information will be shared with immigration agents.
Seats in the House of Representatives and in state legislatures are allocated based on census data. And the Constitution calls for “the actual Enumeration” of the population and says “representatives shall be apportioned … counting the whole number of persons in each state.” This has been understood to mean that all residents are counted, regardless of whether they are citizens.
Ross said he chose to add the new question to improve compliance with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But lawyers and judges scoffed at this explanation as far-fetched. Federal attorneys have enforced the Voting Rights Act for more than 50 years without needing block-by-block data on the citizenship of the residents, they said.During Tuesday’s argument, Justice Elena Kagan called the administration’s arguments “contrived.
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