WASHINGTON -- A day after pledging that the 2020 census would not ask respondents about their citizenship status, the Justice Department reversed course Wednesday and said it was searching for a way to restore the question after orders from President Donald Trump.
Officials told a federal judge in Maryland that they thought there would be a way to still add the question, despite printing deadlines, and that they would ask the Supreme Court to send the case to district court with instructions to remedy the situation.
"There may be a legally available path," Assistant Attorney General Joseph Hunt told U.S. District Judge George Hazel during a conference call with parties to one of three census lawsuits. The call was closed to reporters, but a transcript was made available soon after.
Trump said Wednesday on Twitter that he was "absolutely moving forward" with plans to add the question despite a Supreme Court decision last week that rejected the move.
The administration had said the question was being added to aid in enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority-group voters' access to the ballot box. But in the Supreme Court's decision last week, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's four more liberal members in saying the administration's current justification for the question "seems to have been contrived."
On Tuesday, a Justice Department spokesman confirmed that there would be "no citizenship question on the 2020 census" after signs that the administration was ending the legal fight. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement Tuesday that the "Census Bureau has started the process of printing the decennial questionnaires without the question."
Wednesday's tweet was the second time Trump said he was directing the Commerce Department to move forward with the plan, which critics contend is part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans.
"The News Reports about the Department of Commerce dropping its quest to put the Citizenship Question on the Census is incorrect or, to state it differently, FAKE!" Trump wrote. "We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question."
On Wednesday afternoon, White House officials were working on a way to satisfy Trump's demand but had not yet settled on a solution.
Hazel, the federal judge overseeing the Maryland lawsuits, moved up to Friday from Monday a deadline for the government to stipulate that it is no longer seeking to put the question on the 2020 census.
Absent that confirmation, the judge said, the Maryland lawsuit will continue.
Attorney General Letitia James of New York, whose office headed the census lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court ruling last week, dismissed Trump's statement as "another attempt to sow chaos and confusion."
"The Supreme Court of the United States has spoken, and Trump's own Commerce Department has spoken," she said in a statement. "It's time to move forward to ensure every person in the country is counted."
James asked the federal district judge in Manhattan overseeing that lawsuit, Jesse Furman, for a hearing over Trump's statements.
In a court order, the judge said the Justice Department lawyers who defended the case before him last year must respond to James' request for court intervention and include "a statement of Defendants' position and intentions."
In the short term, work on the census probably won't be affected. The company with a $114 million contract to print census questionnaires had been instructed to start printing forms without the citizenship question.
Joshua Gardner, a second Justice Department lawyer on Wednesday's conference call, confirmed that "the Census Bureau is continuing with the process of printing the questionnaire without a citizenship question, and that process has not stopped."
TWEET RAISES CONCERNS
Trump's tweet stirred fears among opponents of the plan, who hoped the debate over the citizenship question had been put to rest.
The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is representing plaintiffs in legal cases in Maryland, quickly condemned the president's remarks.
"The President's tweet has some of the same effects that the addition of the question would in the first place and some of the same effects on the 18-month battle that was just waged over the citizenship question. It leaves the immigrant communities to believe that the Government is still after information that could endanger them," said Denise Hulett, the group's national senior counsel.
"We are outraged at Trump's tweet," Hulett said in a statement. "The Census Bureau must immediately commit to counteract his statements with the truth -- that the citizenship question will not be on the census."
Regulatory and legal experts largely agree that the administration's chances of retaining the question were exceedingly dim in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to block it.
The administration had argued to the justices that legal challenges to the question had to be resolved because the printing of census forms could not be delayed past early July. But the only avenue the court left open to restoring the question -- producing and winning approval of a new explanation justifying it -- would take weeks, if not months, to complete.
Census results are used to determine House of Representatives seats and for drawing political maps at all levels of government across the country. They are also used to allot federal funding for social services.
Opponents say that adding the citizenship question could lead to an undercounting in areas with large numbers of immigrants, who tend to vote Democratic, potentially costing Democrats representation and government funding.
"It is time for the Census Bureau to move beyond all the outside political agendas and distractions and devote its full attention to preparing for the 2020 census," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
A Commerce Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Information for this article was contributed by Alan Rappeport, Maggie Haberman and Michael Wines of The New York Times; and by Mark Sherman, Jill Colvin, Michael Schneider, Larry Neumeister and staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/04/2019