A federal judge in New York blocked the Trump administration from adding the question earlier this year
By Sam Levine | The Huffington Post
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would hear an expedited appeal in a case seeking to block the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The justices’ decision to take up the case of Department of Commerce v. New York was largely expected and marks the latest step in a closely watched legal battle over next year’s census. Critics contend that adding the citizenship question would discourage people, particularly people of color, from responding to the survey. An inaccurate census would have drastic consequences, they warn, because its results are used to allocate congressional seats and hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds.
In January, a federal judge in Manhattan blocked the Trump administration from adding the question. Normally, the case would then go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit before heading to the Supreme Court. But with the Census Bureau facing a fast-approaching June deadline for finalizing census questions, the high court has agreed to hear argument in the appeal in late April.
