Monday, December 21, 2020
On Friday, the Court issued its much (but only briefly) awaited decision in
Trump v. New York (No. 20-366), rejecting (for now) a challenge to the Trump administration’s recently announced policy of
trying to exclude those without lawful immigration status from the upcoming census. If that gives you a bit of déjà vu, it’s probably because you’re recalling the similarly captioned
Department of Commerce v. New York (2019). That case concerned the legality of the Commerce Department’s proposal to ask census respondents about their citizenship, an effort that most viewed as a first step toward excluding those who were not lawful residents of the U.S. from the decennial census. But Chief Justice Roberts joined with the (then four) liberal Justices in holding that the Commerce Department’s proposed addition of a citizenship question violated the Administrative Procedure Act. Given the timing of that decision—shortly before the census began—the Trump administration was unable to develop a legally valid ground for asking about citizenship, so it abandoned its proposed citizenship question.