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Press Release

Brennan Center Responds to Trump Administration’s Decision to Drop Citizenship Question

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, said, “Count it as a win for reality.”

July 11, 2019

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MEDIA CONTACT: Mireya “Mia” Navarro, Mireya.Navarro@nyu.edu, 646–925–8760

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, issued the following statement:

“The Trump administration acknowledged that it has to follow court rulings and can’t press forward with an illegal citizenship question. That should not be big news, but it is good news. Count it as a win for reality.

“Through all this, the goal of this administration is to gerrymander noncitizens out of representation, upending a long-standing tradition of giving representation to everyone. They want to radically change that. Today, everybody counts when it comes to redistricting. They want to make it so that millions don’t count.

“The Trump administration should focus on its real job: ensuring a full, fair, and accurate count of everyone in the nation.

“The Brennan Center will continue to hold the administration to account, to ensure that it does nothing to further disrupt the census. We will vigorously challenge any attempt to leverage census data for unconstitutional redistricting methods.

“And we will vigorously challenge any administration move to violate the clear and strong rules protecting the privacy of everyone’s responses, including the rules barring the use of personal census data to conduct law or immigration enforcement activities.”

 

Brennan Center resources on the citizenship question:

“There Is No Valid Justification for the Citizenship Question,” Wendy R. Weiser and Kelly Percival of the Brennan Center, SCOTUSblog, April 4, 2019

https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/04/symposium-there-is-no-valid-justification-for-the-citizenship-question/

Amicus Brief in Supreme Court’s Citizenship Question Case, April 1, 2019

https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/BrennanCenter_LeadershipConferenceOnCivilAndHumanRightsEtAl_AmicusBrief.pdf

“A Critical History of the U.S. Census & Citizenship Questions,” Thomas Wolf and Breanna Cea of the Brennan Center, Georgetown Law Journal, April 2019

https://georgetownlawjournal.org/articles/311/critical-history-of-united-states-citizenship-question/pdf

Annotated Guide to the Amicus Briefs in the Supreme Court’s Citizenship Question Case, Apr. 11, 2019
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/annotated-guide-amicus-briefs-supreme-court’s-citizenship-question-cases


Litigation About the 2020 Census, May 9, 2019
https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/2020-census-litigation