Attorney General William Barr says the Trump Administration will legally add a citizenship question to the 2020 census despite a recent Supreme Court ruling which forbade the question from the form.
AP reports:
In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said the Trump administration will take action in the coming days that he believes will allow the government to add the controversial census query. Barr would not detail the plans, though a senior official said President Donald Trump is expected to issue a memorandum to the Commerce Department instructing it to include the question on census forms.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled 5-4 that the administration’s justification for adding the question to the census–claiming it would enforce the Voting Rights Act–was “contrived” and blocked the question from being asked (at least temporarily).
Barr says he has been in touch with President Trump regarding the citizenship question and that he agrees with him the Supreme Court decision was wrong.
“I agree with him that the Supreme Court decision was wrong,” Barr said. The attorney general believes there is “an opportunity potentially to cure the lack of clarity that was the problem and we might as well take a shot at doing that.”
As the Epoch Times notes, in the Supreme Court’s majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “We are presented, in other words, with an explanation for agency action that is incongruent with what the record reveals about the agency’s priorities and decision-making process.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, however, wrote the dissenting opinion and stated the Supreme Court’s “only role in this case is to decide whether the Secretary complied with the law and gave a reasoned explanation for his decision.”
“Unable to identify any legal problem with the Secretary’s reasoning, the Court imputes one by concluding that he must not be telling the truth,” he continued.
