COMMERCE SECRETARY ROSS WAS BREAKING THE LAW

…Activist outside the Supreme Court protesting the “Citizenship census Question”

High level GOP advisor was responsible for the census citizenship question

The division inside the US Supreme Court came to its highest level in the latest decision on the census citizenship question.

The 5 conservative members of the court versus the 4 liberal members battle, it came to a head when it seems that the decision to not include a citizenship question was a compromise for the conservative Chief Roberts to agree with the liberals in not including the question on the 2020 census.

It appears that as with the decision that Roberts made in support of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), regarding the census question, Roberts agreed to not include it in the census.  However, the compromise was to give the Commerce Dept an opportunity to come up with another reason to include the question.  This could require another litigation for offering another reason to include the citizenship question.  Roberts said that the Commerce Department must provide a clearer explanation for adding such a question.

But if you read on, you will see the citizenship question was to be added in order to help the Republicans in dealing with the nation’s immigration issues.

Even though Roberts wrote the splintered opinion, he did say the reason for the decision was that the Commerce Department had “provided a contrived reason for wanting the citizenship  information”.  As poor of a reason as that sounds, Roberts has also said that Commerce is being given another chance to get the question added, but only if they can come up with a better reason for including the question.

It must be made clear that the citizenship question hasn’t been included in the nation’s 10 year census since 1950.  The reason it was not included back then is still a valid reason.  Those non-citizens back then would avoid being counted as they thought this would allow them to be located and then deported.  That same issue is even more important today than it was in 1950.  That is especially a problem today with such a biased president as Donald J. Trump.  The census is supposed to be an accounting of all those living in the United States, not just the citizens.  Many federal dollars are distributed annually to the states, and that distribution depends on a very accurate accounting of everyone living in the United States.

After Thursday’s ruling was announced, President Trump actually tweeted that he has inquired with “the lawyers” whether the census may be delayed until the Supreme Court receives the necessary information to make a “final and decisive decision” on the matter.  (That ain't going to happen.)  “Can anyone really believe that as a great Country, we are not able the ask whether or not someone is a Citizen,” Trump’s tweet says. “Only in America!”.  Our president still continues to show his ignorance of our government.

But there are many in Washington that feel that the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross had violated the law by the way he added the question to the census.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr. had said, “To put the point bluntly, the Federal Judiciary has no authority to stick its nose into the question of whether it is good policy to include a citizenship question on the census or whether the reasons given by Secretary Ross for that decision were his personal reasons or even his real reasons.”

Three additional federal judges have found that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross gave a phony reason for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

And everyone should just look at Chief Roberts’s bottom line.  It was that a lower court was right to say Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had not provided an adequate explanation for adding the question.  And Roberts was joined by liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

It was the usually silent Justice, Clarence Thomas that wrote the dissent.  In the dissent, Justice Thomas said the Trump administration’s inclusion of a citizenship question was well within the federal agency’s discretion, and this statement is true. However, Thomas added: The court, he wrote, had overstepped its role by digging into the rationale for the decision with “suspicion and distrust.”  “For the first time ever, the court invalidates an agency action solely because it questions the sincerity of the agency’s otherwise adequate rationale,” wrote Thomas.  But this action by Commerce was not properly substantiated.  As expected, Thomas was joined by fellow conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

The real issue with the Thomas dissent is that it was not the Commerce Secretary that came up with the census citizenship question, as he has said he did.

Documents found on a recently deceased Republican operative’s computer hard drive revealed that it was the GOP’s longtime “gerrymandering advisor king” that was behind the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the census.  This question was designed by the advisor to help Republicans and American’s “non-Hispanic whites.”

The advisor was a Mr. Thomas Hofeller that had spent nearly two decades as the Republican National Committee’s Redistricting Chairman.  Hofeller helped the GOP redraw maps to secure near-permanent majorities in states such as North Carolina and Texas.  The Hill had reported this when Hofeller died at 75 last year.

After Hofeller’s death, his daughter discovered files on his hard drives revealing that he also played a completely unreported crucial role in the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.  This was later also reported by the New York Times.  Hofeller’s  daughter has since turned over those documents to Common Cause, and they are one of the groups that sued to block the question.

The files show that Hofeller authored an analysis detailing how adding a census citizenship question would help Republicans draw up even more extremely gerrymandered maps.  Hofeller later repeatedly pushed the Trump administration to justify adding the question by falsely arguing that it was necessary for enforcing the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“On the census, the Trump administration’s lies went so far that even this Supreme Court had to say no,” said Michael Waldman, president of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice. “If this leads to a result with no citizenship question, that would be a very welcome outcome, and it would also preserve the status quo."

A string of lower-court judges found that Ross violated federal law and regulations in attempting to include the question on the census. They starkly rebutted his claim that the information was first requested by the Justice Department (which it wasn't) to enforce the Voting Rights Act.  This act protects minorities, and they noted that Ross consulted with the hard-line immigration advocates in the White House, before it was added.

What will happen next was not immediately clear, because the department had said it must know by the summer whether the question can be added, due to the time needed to print the questionnaire..

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said there is not enough time for the administration to come up with a legitimate, legal rationale for adding the citizenship question.  Let's hope he's correct.

“If they try to do this over the weekend, it’s a sign of cutting corners and not reasoned decision-making,” Ho said. “There really is not time. If the administration tries to rush it, that’s clearly a red flag.”

Copyright G. Ater 2019