What the Supreme Court Said About the 2020 Census Citizenship Question

The fight over the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the next census a push that has given the constitutionally mandated decennial count an unusually emotional charge has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the court’s justices heard oral arguments in cases related to the census, which saw debates over highly technical questions about data. The government is arguing that that U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has license to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. A number of states, counties, and nonprofits say that Ross acted capriciously in violation of administrative law, and that a citizenship question undermines the Constitution’s Enumeration Clause, which orders a complete count of every person residing in the country.