Government

Documents Prove Citizenship Question Added To Boost White Power, And The Supreme Court Is Probably Cool With That

Newly revealed documents show Republicans are lying, but SCOTUS probably won't care.

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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

In a functioning polity, documents revealing that the government has been lying about why it wants to do something would make the government’s case based on their lie unwinnable in a court of law. Right? You can’t win your case if your defense is a lie and the court knows you are lying.

But, we do not live in a functioning polity. Our Supreme Court is controlled by Republicans whose guiding ideology seems to be “Republicans win always.” And so today’s amazing-yet-not-actually-surprising revelations in the Census case will probably not scuttle the Trump administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the Census.

The citizenship question is now, officially, a racist gambit by the Republican party. Documents produced from the hard drive of now-dead Republican gerrymander-er Thomas B. Hofeller show that the question was added specifically to make it easier for white people to win elections. From Slate:

Those newly revealed documents show that the Trump administration’s purpose in putting the citizenship question on the upcoming census was not its stated one to help Hispanic voters under the Voting Rights Act, but rather to create policy that would be “a disadvantage to the Democrats” and “advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic Whites.” It’s difficult to produce a greater smoking gun than explicitly saying you are hoping to help the GOP by increasing white voting power.

The Census case has been put on a fast track by the Supreme Court. The conservatives on the Court seem eager to allow the Trump administration to include the question, even as lower courts have called out its addition as the racist attempt at voter suppression that it is. These new documents would seem to end all debate as to the real reason Republicans want to include the question, and messing with the Census so as to enhance white power hasn’t been Constitutional since the 1850s.

But, Republican Supreme Court justices are unlikely to let petty concerns like manifest lying dissuade them from advancing the cause of whites. The Hofeller documents show that the way he thought the citizenship question would help would be to allow him to gerrymander districts based on the number of voting-eligible population, instead of their actual population. This allows Republicans to further enhance the power of white districts, while denying equal representation to non-white districts. It’s still an open Constitutional question as to whether such a gerrymandering scheme is permissible — and by “open question” I mean “this Court is willing to do whatever helps Republicans win elections.”

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That’s not the reason the Trump administration gave for including the citizenship question. But, Republicans will find a way to make that not matter. Professor Rick Hasen explains:

All of that means that the Supreme Court will likely go along with [Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’] true purpose in including the citizenship question on the census: to allow states to draw districts with equal numbers of voter-eligible persons rather than total persons. The smoking-gun evidence showing that government officials lied in offering the Voting Rights Act excuse for including the question likely will be seen by these justices as irrelevant if the real reason is a permissible one.

When faced with incontrovertible evidence that the administration’s legal defense is a lie, the Republican justices will likely invent a legal defense the government didn’t make and go with that. We faced with incontrovertible evidence that the administration is advancing a racist voter suppression policy, the Republican justices will likely invent race-neutral reasoning to justify the bigotry.

Only Republicans are allowed to win, according to the Republicans who control the country.

New Memo Reveals the Census Question Was Added to Boost White Voting Power [Slate]

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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