An analysis by census officials found that nearly 6 percent of households with at least one noncitizen, or roughly 6.5 million people, would go uncounted with a citizenship question on the 2020 census. “There’s no question that the bureau staff preferred not to have this question on the census,” Noel Francisco, the Justice Department’s top Supreme Court lawyer, conceded on Tuesday. But, he argued, Mr. Ross acted reasonably. Or as Justice Elena Kagan said on Tuesday, Mr. Ross was “shopping for a need” for the citizenship data. “There have been lots of assistant attorneys general in the civil rights division that have never made a plea for this kind of data,” Justice Kagan noted.

Source: New York Times April 24, 2019 20:48 UTC