Are You A Citizen?

In less than three weeks, there will be an argument before the Supreme Court on the rather silly dispute as to whether or not the Commerce Department can have census takers ask people if they are US citizens.  There have been 22 times that the federal government took a census.  The question about citizenship has appeared on all or part of the questionaires for those censuses 21 times.  In other words, asking this question is nothing new.  Now, however, it has been attacked as not just improper but also unconstitutional.  Even worse, those who are attacking this question have convinced three left wing judges that they are correct.  The problem for those who want to prevent the question from being asked is that Congress gave the Secretary of Commerce major discretion about what questions can be asked by census takers.  Despite the rather doubtful attempts to paint the census question on citizenship as something sinister, it is not surprising that a government would want to know how many citizens there are in the country.

The Supreme Court is likely to decide this question rather quickly.  The Court understands that if a decision is not handed down by June, it will begin to affect the preparations for the 2020 census which will be next March.