The US Supreme Court declined the Trump Administration’s request to halt a trial in Manhattan in one of the six lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s inclusion of a question on citizenship status on the 2020 census. Federal courts in California, Maryland, and New York have allowed five of the six challenges to the Trump Administration’s addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 census. This question was removed after the 1950 census, but was reinstated on March 26, 2018, by US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department oversees the US Census Bureau.
Six lawsuits were filed opposing the reinstatement of the citizenship status question, decrying this as a partisan maneuver by the Republican administration to discriminate against immigrants and reduce participation in the census by Hispanics and other minorities. Critics of the reinstatement allege that the question would result in an inaccurate counting of the population that would substantially harm state and local governments and the provision of necessary services, since the most critical aspects of civil society, from political representation to the doling out of federal funds, depend on the decennial census.