We know the citizenship question will hurt the census. Alabama already tried it.
Common sense tells you that adding a question to the 2020 Census asking about citizenship status will depress response rates from an immigrant community already traumatized by President Trump鈥檚 incendiary rhetoric and deportation machinery. But common sense was not enough for the Trump administration.
Certainly, it was not enough for Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department is responsible for administering the census and聽聽from the Justice Department to include a citizenship question. Refusing to acknowledge the question鈥檚 predictable impact, Ross has instead聽聽that 鈥渘o one [has] provided evidence that reinstating a citizenship question on the decennial census would materially decrease response rates.鈥�
This is a bizarre claim, as it鈥檚 the responsibility of the Commerce Department to determine whether proposed questions will promote or interfere with the constitutionally required census. And doing so would have been easy in this case: All Ross had to do was to look to Alabama鈥檚 experience with citizenship questions.
In 2011, Alabama passed the Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, better known as HB 56. The law聽聽to make life so difficult for undocumented immigrants and their family members, documented or not, that they would 鈥渄eport themselves鈥� from Alabama. It was written in large part by Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who had earlier drafted another anti-immigrant law聽聽and who would later聽聽a census citizenship question to Trump at the start of his administration.
One of the聽聽of the Alabama law was to 鈥渕easure and assess the population of [Alabama] students who are aliens not lawfully present.鈥� This meant聽聽schools to ask parents or guardians of students to submit their children鈥檚 birth certificates or to notify the schools, under penalty of perjury, of their children鈥檚 鈥渁ctual citizenship or immigration status鈥� when enrolling them. In short, Alabama law instructed the state鈥檚 schools to ask a citizenship question.
Undocumented students聽聽to enroll in public schools, and Alabama聽claimed聽that it was simply trying to count them. But the impact of the Alabama citizenship question was both immediate and devastating.
Even though the law did not apply to students who were already enrolled,聽聽鈥� about 7 percent of the statewide total 鈥� were 鈥渁bsent鈥� from schools across the state on the first Monday after the law went into effect, according to state education officials. In one small Alabama town, the New York Times聽, more than 100鈥侶ispanic students withdrew from school altogether within the first week. One mother聽told聽the Southern Poverty Law Center that she kept her children out of school for two weeks, fearing they would be singled out for harassment. 鈥淢y kids told me there were no [other] Hispanics at the school, so I didn鈥檛 let them go,鈥� she said.
Recognizing that Alabama鈥檚 effort to question families about the immigration status of their children would deter many from sending their children to school, a federal appellate court聽聽the law unconstitutional.
The likely impact of a citizenship question on the census would surely be far more profound. Consider the situation of an undocumented mother with two children who are citizens born in this country. She remembers Trump鈥檚 anti-immigrant rhetoric on the campaign trail. She has read about or may even know families who have been ripped apart when one family member was swept up in an immigration raid.
Now ask yourself: If you were that mother and received a census form from the Trump administration asking about your citizenship, would you answer the question and mail the form back, trusting the administration not to use the information against you? Or would you play it safe and ignore it?
Given that we cannot depend on Ross鈥檚 common sense, his courage to stand up to pressure from the Justice Department or his willingness to assess the impact of the citizenship question on the integrity of the census, our best hope is that the courts will block the Trump administration from asking the citizenship question, just as the courts blocked Alabama from asking questions about the citizenship of its students.
Like the right of all students to enroll in public schools, the accuracy of the census is a matter of great constitutional significance because it determines the distribution of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives across the states for a decade. It also is a matter of tremendous practical significance because it determines, among other things, the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds each year.
There is no place for a question that will deter some people from participating in the census. The stakes for our democracy are simply too high.
The following op-ed was first published in on April 18, 2018.鈥�
Getty Images / Andrew Lichtenstein鈥�
