# Supreme Court looks likely to approve Census citizenship question by 5-4 vote **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 25, 2019, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025 "2019-04-25T05:30:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/101 "2019-04-27T00:06:50Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I think it eminently important that a country might want to know how many people in its population are citizens. Why wouldn’t it? > > If not that, then what is the need for all of these other questions? [Why We Ask Each Question | American Community Survey | U.S. Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/) > > Should they be out as well? Why are you asking about the American Community Survey, which is not the decennial census? ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/102 "2019-04-27T00:30:57Z")
> [@Oakminster](#): > > I do. I think requiring a response to that question may violate the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. How could it possibly do that? First off, they can’t hand the information over to law enforcement, and secondly not being a citizen does not necessarily mean one is here illegally. There are various categories of non-citizen that legally reside here. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/103 "2019-04-27T00:33:54Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > Those who support adding the question, what is it that this question will accomplish? And how will that be useful? > [@UltraVires](#): > > I think it eminently important that a country might want to know how many people in its population are citizens. Why wouldn’t it? > .. I extend a tentative “thanks” for giving your opinion about one of the questions. Actual “thanks” is contingent on you expressing an opinion about the 2nd question, as well. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/104 "2019-04-27T00:37:16Z")
> [@](#): > > How could it possibly do that? First off, they can’t hand the information over to law enforcement, and secondly not being s citizen does not necessarily mean one is here illegally. Ah, good! Then we may expect the conservative media outlets will earnestly inform all and sundry that there is no risk whatsoever! This is purely an exercise in civic virtue. Dark suspicions are dispelled, by the purity of Republican intentions, now and forever. Hispanic citizens can rest assured of the warm generosity of Deer Leader, and fear nothing! And I am the Queen of Romania. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/105 "2019-04-27T01:13:32Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I think it eminently important that a country might want to know how many people in its population are citizens. Why wouldn’t it? Serious question - Does only the number of “Citizens” determine Representatives and such? ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/106 "2019-04-27T01:20:10Z")
If SCOTUS upholds the citizenship question as they did Trump’s “Muslim Ban”, it will be rapidly careening into the realm of the “see no evil” court. Lower Courts in both cases have properly considered the clear-as-day nefarious motives that are well documented to be driving this Administration’s law-making on both of these issues. Four or five members of the current Supreme Court seem happy to look the other way. ---
**Author:** ![Bayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bayaker/32/3454_2.png) [@Bayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bayaker)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/107 "2019-04-27T01:20:13Z")
It seems ridiculous to me that a question about citizenship would be any more invasive than many of the other questions on the census, and I don’t care if it’s included or not. A decennial enumeration for congressional apportionment should be just that - a head count, and no more. I find the questions about race, income, and possessions to be especially over-the-top. It’s none of anybody’s business. I say do away with them all except “how many people live here?” ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/108 "2019-04-27T01:21:27Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Serious question - Does only the number of “Citizens” determine Representatives and such? No, even though only citizens can vote, it is the total number of people that determines the representation. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/109 "2019-04-27T01:28:00Z")
By the way, [this](https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/annotated-guide-amicus-briefs-supreme-court%E2%80%99s-citizenship-question-cases) (from the Brennan Center for Justice) seems to be a good link into the perspectives and various amicus briefs by those opposing the citizenship question. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/110 "2019-04-27T01:38:29Z")
Correction to my last post…That link actually summarizes and gives links to briefs on both sides of the question, e.g., it includes briefs by the RNC and some f-cking-crazy-looking brief by Citizens United, English First Foundation and a bunch of other right wing groups whose Table of Authorities includes the Holy Bible and rails against secular humanism and globalism. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/111 "2019-04-27T01:56:18Z")
Section II of the [Common Cause brief](http://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/Common%20Cause%20et%20al_Amicus%20Brief.pdf) [PDF] (starting on p. 13) has a lot of relevant info for this discussion, including the estimate given by the Census Bureau, based on hard analyses in regard to the American Community Survey, that the question would result in a 5.1% decline in the response from non-citizen households. The brief also documents a discussion that Ross had with the infamous Kris Kobach. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/112 "2019-04-27T01:58:07Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > No, even though only citizens can vote, it is the total number of people that determines the representation. Then why does “citizenship” matter then? ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/113 "2019-04-27T03:39:37Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Serious question - Does only the number of “Citizens” determine Representatives and such? Apportionment of congressional representatives _to_ the states is strictly and explicitly based on the whole number of residents, period. For drawing districts _within_ states, it’s a little more fuzzy, and there’s a fear by some groups that some states will use the citizenship information to draw districts with an equal number of citizens rather than an equal number of residents, and that the Supreme Court will either approve or mandate this approach in the resulting litigation. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/114 "2019-04-27T10:47:23Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Then why does “citizenship” matter then? One reason would be to provide for a properly run election. Knowing that only citizens can vote it would not be unreasonable to provide for a particular ratio of citizens of voting age to polling places without regard to number of residents. Community A has a population of 100,000 people. Census data shows that 25% (25,000) are not citizens. Of the 75% (75,000) who are citizens, 20% of those (15,000) are not of voting age leaving only 60,000 eligible voters. If the recommendation is for only polling place for every 1000 eligible voters then Community A needs 6 polling places. Community B has a population of 100,000 people. Census data shows 12.5% (12,500) are not citizens. Of the 87.5% (87,500) who are citizens, 20% of those (17,500) are not of voting age leaving only 80,000 eligible voters. If the recommendation is for one polling place for every 1000 eligible voters then Community B needs 8 polling places. A second reason to gather citizenship data would be to determine the extent to which jury pools may be skewed by various methods of choosing jury pools. Only citizens can sit on a jury in most US jurisdictions. Often jury pools are drawn from driver’s licensing records, but that excludes people who are disproportionately poor and/or medically incapable of driving. Similar problems could arise from using property tax records as a source of jury pool data. Any method of jury selection that underrepresents particular minorities might be challenged as unconstitutional, but would need data to back up the claim. And courts could assess whether any other proposed method of selecting a jury pool is representative if they have the necessary data. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Census data ends up being used in many ways. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/115 "2019-04-27T11:33:52Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Then why does “citizenship” matter then? Citizenship matters to people so they can vote and permanently live in the U.S., among some other things. The citizenship question matters to the Trump Administration so they suppress the political power of places with more immigrants. It’s all just that simple. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/116 "2019-04-27T14:30:18Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I think it eminently important that a country might want to know how many people in its population are citizens. Why wouldn’t it? Sure. And the US already collects this data: > [@](#): > > Questions related to a person’s citizenship did once appear on the census, but historians say the phrasing and intent of those earlier questions were different — and, in any case, they were removed from the main head count after 1950 in a bid to improve the census’s accuracy. Meanwhile, social science methods have evolved to the point that high-quality citizenship data can be — and already is — collected via other Census Bureau surveys and administrative records. So the Trump administration is facing an important question: Why add a question to the census that could harm the quality and credibility of the data — and also may not be necessary? > > SOURCE: [How The Citizenship Question Could Break The Census | FiveThirtyEight](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-citizenship-question-could-break-the-census/) So why put it on the census? ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/117 "2019-04-27T14:57:41Z")
> [@Iggy](#): > > Community A has a population of 100,000 people. Census data shows that 25% (25,000) are not citizens. Of the 75% (75,000) who are citizens, 20% of those (15,000) are not of voting age leaving only 60,000 eligible voters. If the recommendation is for only polling place for every 1000 eligible voters then Community A needs 6 polling places. > > Community B has a population of 100,000 people. Census data shows 12.5% (12,500) are not citizens. Of the 87.5% (87,500) who are citizens, 20% of those (17,500) are not of voting age leaving only 80,000 eligible voters. If the recommendation is for one polling place for every 1000 eligible voters then Community B needs 8 polling places. I think your math is off: 6 x 1000 != 60000. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/118 "2019-04-27T21:24:40Z")
I think the lack of standing argument has merit. These states are saying that they MAY suffer harm, but only if a certain group acts in a stereotypical way and refuses, in violation of federal law, to respond to a question that in and of itself is not inculpatory in any way. That’s a pretty thin definition of a harm: That a third party might act illegally. No citizen would have standing to challenge the question; I think that is agreed, so why would a state have standing? I don’t know if there is a good analogy, because it is that absurd. What else could I go to court for because a law might possibly make a third person act illegally to my detriment? My complaint would be with the third party, not with the law. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/119 "2019-04-27T21:33:39Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > …only if a certain group acts in a stereotypical way and refuses, in violation of federal law, to respond to a question that in and of itself is not inculpatory in any way… Because despite GOP beliefs that that “certain group” is stupider than good Christian White People, they aren’t. Given Trump and the GOP’s complete disregard for the rule of law exhibited in the last few years, you’d have to be insane to believe that they wouldn’t use that question to identify and deport non-citizens, no matter what the “rules” (which don’t apply to Republicans or Trump) say. The point of this question is to make people not answer the census (nobody cares about the actual answer, we have excellent numbers for that already). If merely asking the question doesn’t achieve that, do you honestly believe they won’t take steps to make sure that fear of answering that question is justified? I sure don’t. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025/120 "2019-04-27T21:39:48Z")
The guys that enjoy ripping kids out of the arms of their parents? But of course, only the noblest and honorable motives. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/supreme-court-looks-likely-to-approve-census-citizenship-question-by-5-4-vote/833025.md?page=7)