Don’t Count on the Courts to Save Voting Rights
There’s good reason to be skeptical of the Supreme Court’s commitment to voting rights
The Trump administration wants you to believe that a citizenship question on the 2020 census would protect voting rights. In reality, it’s a threat to them.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that would decide whether the Trump administration can include a citizenship question on the 2020 census. The case involves all three branches of government: On the legislative side, per the 14th Amendment, Congress is charged with obtaining an “enumeration” (count) of the number of “whole persons in each state” once every 10 years for the purpose of determining the appropriate number of representatives each state will receive. The Commerce Department, which falls under the executive branch, is charged with conducting the decennial census and seeks to add a citizenship question. The Supreme Court (that is, the judicial branch) is now charged with settling the dispute.
The case, Department of Commerce v. New York, has critical political consequences. The census results affect everything from government funding allocations to state representation in Congress. (After the 2010 census, for example, Texas and Florida each gained four House seats, while New York…
