WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) today released the following statement regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Trump Administration’s request to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census:
“Recent revelations have made it clear that the individuals who worked to add a citizenship question to the census were motivated by partisan politics. Today, the Supreme Court recognized that the Trump Administration’s stated rationale for adding this question ‘seems to have been contrived.’
“Through both Article I, Section 2 and the 14th Amendment, the Constitution explicitly requires the federal government to conduct a census that counts the ‘whole number of persons in each State.’ I believe that it is clearly the duty of the government to have a count of all people, and I am glad that this underhanded effort to suppress the democratic process has been thwarted for now. In light of this decision, the Administration should immediately move forward to finalize and print the census questionnaire without a citizenship question.”
The Census Bureau has estimated that including the citizenship question could lead to an eight percent decline in response rates from households potentially containing noncitizens. Illinois could lose as much as $128 million in federal funding per year, for the next decade, should the citizenship question be included on the 2020 Decennial Census.
