The Census Bureau logo is pictured here. Monday's announcement comes just days before the March 31 deadline, when the census questions are legally required to be finalized by. | Carlos Osorio/AP States to sue Trump administration for adding citizenship question to U.S. Census The California AG quickly filed a legal complaint, while New York's Schneiderman said he would lead a multi-state lawsuit.

A collection of states started preparing legal actions against the Trump administration on Tuesday just hours after the Commerce Department announced that it would include a controversial question about citizenship status in the 2020 U.S. Census — a move that could have far-reaching effects on immigrants and the political landscape.

The decision to include the question sparked a wave of backlash from congressional Democrats and civil rights groups, and the White House on Tuesday was pressed to defend the move.


White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed claims that the revamped census could see a drop in response rates from immigrants, who may fear the information could lead to their deportation, disproportionately affecting their ability to attain federal resources.

“This is something that’s been part of the census for decades and something that the Department of Commerce felt strongly needed to be included again," she told reporters at the White House press briefing on Tuesday.

Sanders maintained that including the question was "necessary for the Department of Justice to protect voters" and would boost efforts to comply with federal voting rights laws.

The Commerce Department's census announcement was met with swift pushback from state and congressional officials.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration late Monday, arguing that the citizenship question would "botch" the census. "What the Trump Administration is requesting is not just alarming, it is an unconstitutional attempt to discourage an accurate Census count," Becerra said in a statement.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced on Tuesday that he would lead a multi-state lawsuit “to preserve a fair and accurate” administration of the U.S. Census, while Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said she would join the lawsuit.

Schneiderman, a longtime nemesis of President Donald Trump, said the Commerce Department's plan to include a question on citizenship would “create an environment of fear and distrust in immigrant communities” and prevent the fair distribution of federal funds.

Eric Holder, who served as attorney general under President Barack Obama and now leads a redistricting initiative, also threatened to sue. If immigrants are underrepresented in future census counts, the shift could have significant ramifications for redistricting efforts for House seats and state legislatures.

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“We will litigate to stop the administration from moving forward with this irresponsible decision,” said Holder, chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “The addition of a citizenship question to the census questionnaire is a direct attack on our representative democracy.”

According to the statement from the Commerce Department, having such data will "permit more effective enforcement" of the Voting Rights Act. Monday's announcement comes just days before the March 31 deadline, when the census questions are legally required to be finalized.

In a letter discussing the decision, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he took a "hard look" at the Department of Justice's request as part of a review that included an examination of any possible legal issues associated with asking about citizenship. The secretary said the Commerce Department also reviewed concerns about lower participation in the census due to inclusion of the question, but ultimately was not swayed by the arguments.

"The reinstatement of a citizenship question will not decrease the response rate of residents who already decided not to respond. And no one provided evidence that there are residents who would respond accurately to a decennial census that did not contain a citizenship question but would not respond if it did (although many believed that such residents had to exist),” Ross wrote. “While it is possible this belief is true, there is no information available to determine the number of people who would in fact not respond due to a citizenship question being added."

The department emphasized that part of the 2000 Census included a question about citizenship status and that a smaller, yearly survey conducted by the bureau known as the American Community Survey has included a question since 2005.

A bipartisan group of local officials on Tuesday cautioned Ross that implementing the citizenship question would politicize the process and adversely affect their ability to distribute resources.

“By caving to the Department of Justice’s request to include a citizenship question on the 2020 United States Census, Secretary Ross has politicized and compromised a process mayors rely on to deliver essential services to their cities,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said in a statement. “On behalf of mayors of both parties, I urge Secretary Ross to remove this question and ensure the next census produces a fair, accurate representation of our communities.”

Experts worry that a drop in participation would result in an inaccurate count of the full U.S. population, which could have massive ramifications for everything from how federal funds are distributed to how congressional districts are redrawn. The director of Huffington Post Polling, Ariel Edwards-Levy, wrote on Twitter that changes to the census could have effects beyond the federal government, since many opinion pollsters adjust their election-related polling using census data.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, slammed the addition of the question and said Ross had "capitulated" to Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“This untimely, unnecessary and untested citizenship question will disrupt planning at a critical point, undermine years of painstaking preparation and increase costs significantly, putting a successful, accurate count at risk," Gupta said in statement. "The question is unnecessarily intrusive and will raise concerns in all households — native- and foreign-born, citizen and non-citizen — about the confidentiality of information provided to the government and how government authorities may use that information."

The announcement follows an increasingly tough tack on illegal immigration by the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been spurred by Trump's staunch views on the subject.

Democrats have generally opposed the addition of a citizenship question.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) had said such an announcement would "undermine the accuracy of the census as a whole" and was even more troubling given the Justice Department's immigration rhetoric.

After the announcement, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) accused the administration of trying to politicize the constitutionally required practice.

"The federal Census is NOT a tool to rally the President’s base. It’s a constitutionally mandated count of every single PERSON living in this country," he wrote on Twitter, touting his legislation that would prohibit the Census Bureau from adding a citizenship question.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi argued Tuesday that the planned question violated the Constitution and served as “a dog-whistle tactic” to rally Trump’s populist base.