Why Trump Had to Back Down on the Census Citizenship Question

President Donald Trump directed the Department of Commerce to obtain citizenship information by other means in a Rose Garden press conference Thursday.

The president said he will issue an executive order requiring federal agencies to forward all citizenship data in their possession to the Commerce Department.

Administration officials hope that aggregated data will provide comprehensive information about the number of citizens in the U.S. However, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has previously said using that data would not provide the government with a complete picture.

The government cannot continue its legal fight to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form because of time constraints, Attorney General William Barr argued Thursday.

While insisting that the government’s legal position is correct on the merits, Barr said continued litigation would seriously disrupt the census itself.

“As a practical matter, the Supreme Court’s decision closed all paths to adding the question to the 2020 decennial census,” he added. “Put simply, the impediment was logistical, not legal. We simply cannot complete the litigation in time to carry out the census.”

Barr emphasized that the high court decided it is lawful to include a citizenship question on the census form as a general matter. The justices ruled against the administration on narrow grounds, finding the government’s official explanation for its action was “contrived.”

The attorney general said that problem is “curable,” and expressed confidence that the administration could have prevailed if not for the press of time.

“In my view, the government has ample justification to inquire about citizenship status on the census and could plainly provide rationales for doing so that would satisfy the Supreme Court,” Barr said. “There is thus no question that a new decision to add the question would ultimately survive legal review.”

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