Commerce Hopes to Derail Lawsuits on Census Citizenship Question

The decision in March by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to add a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 census has provoked multiple lawsuits, one of which got a key boost this week when a New York judge allowed discovery to proceed. Judge Jesse Furman of Manhattan’s Southern District accepted the request from New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood on behalf of 18 states and more than a dozen localities to move forward with the action to obtain additional internal documents that helped determine how Commerce arrived at the decision to add the question, as the Washington Post reported. A Commerce Department spokesman told Government Executive on Thursday that the government still hopes to prevail in this and some half-dozen related suits.