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A federal judge in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration was purposefully withholding funding from the U.S. Census Bureau to cause racial and ethnic minorities to be undercounted in the 2020 census. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in his ruling that the case was too speculative, and that the U.S. Constitution …
A federal judge in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration was purposefully withholding funding from the U.S. Census Bureau to cause racial and ethnic minorities to be undercounted in the 2020 census.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in his ruling that the case was too speculative, and that the U.S. Constitution did not require additional spending.
The plaintiffs, Brooklyn-based nonprofit Center for Popular Democracy Action and the city of Newburgh, N.Y., had argued that without additional funding, the census threatened undercounts of blacks, Hispanics, and other minority communities. The plaintiffs requested an injunction to make the bureau spend an additional $770 million from previous appropriations to ensure that more census-takers would visit those communities.
“Investing resources in counting hard-to-count communities is all the more important now, as COVID-19 heightens the risk of undercounting vulnerable populations,” Nikita Lalwani, a Yale Law student who helped represent the plaintiffs, said after the decision.
The Trump administration has faced criticism from opponents who claim an effort to add a citizenship question to the census was based on political considerations, rather than its publicly stated effort to enforce the Voting Rights Act.
The move was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in July, with President Trump then announcing that he would abandon the legal battle over the question. The White House turned instead to an executive order to direct the Commerce Department to collect the information by other means.
