Latino and immigrant rights groups filed a lawsuit Friday afternoon seeking to block the Trump administration from collecting citizenship data to be used for redistricting.
Unfortunately, the suit has a basic conceptual flaw: If Latino and other immigrant groups could be counted on to vote Republican, or if the districts with a lot of non-citizens tended to vote Republican, Trump and his minions would be just fine with including non-citizens in the census and the count for representation. So it’s really political, not racial or ethnic discrimination that’s at work here.
(Does it make a difference? I think it should not. But political discrimination is generally given a pass.)
IIRC, there is a constitutional requirement for this. Is there any conditional count suggestion? I know the 3/5 rule went out a hundred years ago, but where are the additional conditions?
What on earth is “Latinx”? My whole family is Latino and I know of no one who uses this term. It’s proper to use Latino when referring to mixed gender. If you really must have a gender neutral word try “Latin” or “Hispanic”. This oh so careful woke language is tiresome. The problems of gender inequality can’t be solved by grammatical reform and it just detracts from the message this article is trying to convey.
Your right, the Constitution says count everyone. Even when the 3/5ths rule was law, all noncitizen slaves were counted - thus an obvious example of original intent for the Right Wing Justices.
I heard that Article II of the Constitution says Trump can do whatever he wants.
Not other presidents, mind you, but Trump exclusively. It’s really in there. I heard someone say so.
Section 2, 14th Amendment: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”
There is no serious question that representation amongst the states includes both citizens and non-citizens. The effort to differentiate between them is to allow states to draw districts based on numbers of citizens, as doing so would allow bad actor legislatures to dilute the voting power of urban areas that also happen to include higher numbers of non-citizens.
Texas is going to have the same number of representatives whether or not Wilbur Ross gets to collect citizenship data. But if Wilbur gets to collect citizenship data, the Texas legislature will use it to make sure that places like Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio have fewer representatives among them.
The Constitution requires the counting of “all persons.”
Citizenship is never mentioned in the context of the census.
ETA: The real fight here is whether states should be allowed to redistrict based on citizenship numbers, or CVAP numbers. It would be dumb to limit the Census Bureau’s ability to collect data on citizenship.
and @vlharpley and @txlawyer , so when this goes to SCOTUS the originalist interpretation should allow the citizenship question to be disallowed.
Except…
It doesn’t work for the GOP, so where does that leave us?
Up shit creek and searching for a paddle, I’m afraid.
Why? What has changed in the last 10 years that after more than 200 years of prior census, it now “would be dumb to limit the Census Bureau’s ability to collect data on citizenship”?
Good point. I don’t disagree. My point is that if the non-citizens in questions–primarily Hispanic–were likely to vote Republican, then the same data might be used to build up Republican districts through gerrymandering.
The Constitution does not prohibit counting citizens and non-citizens. The Constitution requires apportionment of representatives among the states to be based on total population, including citizens and non-citizens alike (excluding only those pesky “Indians not taxed”). The Constitution is silent on whether states can draw districts based on citizen population versus total population.
Understood, but the issue here is who gets counted and that’s what’ll go to the court. Districting is managed at the State level and the State courts have made their decisions and they stick.
It would be dumb to prohibit the Census Bureau from collecting any kind of demographic data. There is certainly nothing in the Constitution that prevents the bureau from collecting data on race, gender, religion, political affiliation, you name it. Why would citizenship be any different? It helps governments at all levels deploy resources appropriately, allows academics to study the demographics of the country, and even aids businesses in making economic decisions about where to profitably target their operations.
Note: That doesn’t mean Wilbur Ross is allowed to arbitrarily add a citizenship question to the decennial census based on pretext and in contradiction of the Census Bureau’s own experts.
What kind of Texas lawyer are you?
Would it surprise you if CB asks and collects citizenship data questions on a different survey each and every month out of the year?
Why would you think that fact is surprising? The decennial census isn’t the same thing as the ACS, but my point is that banning Census from collecting citizenship data would be bad.
My point is that the CB is not being banned to ask the citizenship question at all. It’s a myth to think so.