ATTORNEY GENERAL HERRING BLOCKS TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FROM COMPROMISING 2020 CENSUS

~ Federal judge rules against the Trump Administration’s proposed addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census ~

RICHMOND (January 15, 2019) – Attorney General Mark R. Herring today announced that Virginia and its partner states and localities have succeeded in blocking the Trump Administration from including a citizenship question on the 2020 decennial Census following a lawsuit they filed back in April. The Court found that the inclusion of the citizenship question would most likely cause a decline in the response rate, especially among noncitizens and Hispanic populations. Additionally, the Court concluded that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross lied about his reasoning for including the citizenship provision.

“Today’s news is a win for democracy and shows the Trump Administration that their ongoing attempts to intimidate and instill fear in immigrant communities will not go unchallenged,” said Attorney General Herring. “An accurate Census is imperative as it not only determines how much general funding comes to Virginia for things like healthcare, education and transportation, but also how many congressional representatives and electoral votes the Commonwealth gets. I am pleased that my colleagues and I were able to block this poison pill from being included in the 2020 Census.”

 

The Court’s ruling comes after Attorney General Herring and a bipartisan coalition of 18 states, six cities, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors filed a lawsuit back in April 2018 to block the Trump Administration from undermining the 2020 decennial Census with a “poison pill” citizenship question that the U.S. Census Bureau said would likely depress response and compromise the accuracy of the census. The lawsuit emphasized the irreparable harm that would result from inaccuracies in the 2020 Census caused by demanding citizenship information. Hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds are directly tied to demographic information obtained through the census, including the Highway Trust Fund and other Department of Transportation grants, Child Care Development Grants, and Medicaid. Consequently, inaccurate counts can potentially deprive states of much-needed funds designed to protect low-income and vulnerable communities.

Additionally, the coalition filed official comments in August 2018 urging the Census Bureau to reconsider its decision to include an unnecessary citizenship question that would impair the Bureau’s essential function of counting all people in the 2020 census. The comments explained that demanding citizenship information on the Census would depress response rates in cities and states with large immigrant populations, directly threatening those states’ fair representation in Congress and the Electoral College, as well as billions of dollars in critical federal funds.

A total of $700 billion is distributed annually to nearly 300 different census-guided federal grant and funding programs. In FY2015, Virginia received over $953 million in Highway Trust Fund grants, over $131 million in Urbanized Area Formula Grants, and nearly $64 million in Child Care Development grants, all based on census data.

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