The Atlantic

The Citizenship Question Isn’t Quite Dead Yet

A federal judge held that the Trump administration’s desired change to the census violates the law, but the Supreme Court could review the decision.
Source: Mary Altaffer / AP

On Tuesday, a federal judge struck down the infamous citizenship question. Judge Jesse M. Furman, in the Southern District of New York, decided to block the Commerce Department from “adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census questionnaire,” a decision informed by what Furman found was clear evidence that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross violated federal law in providing conflicting and untruthful rationales about its potential inclusion. Furman’s conclusion: The Trump administration misled Americans about the intent of the citizenship question, and willingly risked the integrity of the decennial census in order to push it through, as a political matter.

But the controversy over the question, fueled by President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and fears that the census , isn’t over yet. The Supreme Court could still hear the case, and the seeds of

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