Supreme Court blocks Trump on census citizenship question

WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court ruled Thursday against adding a question about citizenship to the US census in a setback for President Donald Trump and victory for critics who say the item would lead to severe undercounts of immigrants.

Chief Justice John Roberts tipped the balance by siding with the court's liberal minority to block the Trump administration bid for the question to be added to its 2020 census. The 5-4 ruling said the government's arguments were "contrived." However, the decision left open the possibility that the Trump administration could still seek to make new justifications.

Trump, who is in Japan for the G20 summit, said on Twitter that not having the citizenship question was "totally ridiculous." He said government lawyers would now try to have the 2020 census delayed -- "no matter how long" -- in order to give the Supreme Court "additional information" and get a new decision.

In a separate ruling, the top court´s conservative majority refused to rule against electoral redistricting practices, known as gerrymandering, that tend to favor the party in power. Held only once every 10 years, the census is instrumental in apportioning some $675 billion in federal funding to states and cities, and also determines the number of seats allocated to each state in the House of Representatives.

Despite Trump´s frequent claim that the census is "meaningless" without asking if respondents are US citizens, that question has not appeared on the survey since 1950. Critics, backed by the Census Bureau´s experts, said a citizenship question would drive many immigrants to avoid answering out of fear of being caught up in Trump's hardline crackdown on illegal immigration -- rendering them invisible.

The bureau's experts said that 1.6 to 6.5 million immigrants, notably Hispanics, would avoid the census or lie to census takers. The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the decision as "a victory for immigrants and communities of color across America."

Opposition was led by some 20 states including Democratic-led California and New York, as well as major cities like Chicago and San Francisco, which filed legal actions against inclusion of the question. When lower courts ruled against the question, the Trump administration asked the nation´s highest court to intervene.