A third federal judge has denied a request by the Justice Department to throw out a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s move to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.
Maryland U.S. District Judge George Hazel Wednesday denied the administration’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit there spearheaded by Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
“Plaintiffs have made a strong preliminary showing that Defendants have acted in bad faith, and that Defendants’ stated reason for adding the citizenship question—to further enforce the VRA—was pretextual,” the judge’s opinion said.
Previously, federal judges in New York and California also issued orders letting lawsuits against the question to proceed, after Trump administration sought to have them thrown out.
Last month, Manhattan U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman, who’s overseeing a lawsuit brought by multiple states as well as one brought by the ACLU, dismissed one of the claims brought in those cases — that the question violated the Enumeration Clause of the Constitution — but let the other claims advance.
On Friday, the judge presiding over two federal lawsuits in California, Richard Seeborg, also denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss those cases.
Those decisions cited the administrative records provided so far in the litigation that contradict the public reasoning Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the Census, gave in adding the question.
There is another citizenship question lawsuit in Maryland, brought by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, that’s also being overseen by Judge Hazel. That case is farther behind in the judicial process and the Justice Department will file its motion to dismiss there on Friday.
These folks just won’t take a hint, will they?
Drop the citizenship question. It’s a loser from the get-go.
I do a lot of genealogy using the Federal Census data. The variety and changeability of the questions from decade to decade is interesting. Check the site below and click on any decade - it’ll list the questions.
I think you’ll find it interesting.
https://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/index_of_questions/1790_1.html
Wait. Isn’t Eric Holder an establishment stooge?
(snark)
Well Trump has praised him (in a weird and whiny stab at Sessions) - so maybe he now gets a pass by the Trumpioids.
This is a really interesting issue. Traditionally decisions like this would be basically unreviewable However, Ross the Con, appeared to have just baldface lied. Judges don’t like that at all. So they allowed discovery, which showed that Ross the Con was lying. Sorry, but no real Judge will allow the US Government to just lie to them. And no appellate Court will intervene to save lairs like the Trump Administration (expect possibly the 5th, and these cases are not there).
This is just going to drag on in discovery for a year or more, at which point it will be too late to add a question…
and p.s. it helps that these cases all landed before Obama Appointees, with the cases in the 2nd, 9th, and 4th Circuits, all of which are real courts that will likely call the issue w/o partisanship.