#becerra

maria becerra videoclip berlin

The U.S. Constitution, Art. I, § 2,  gives Congress the duty to conduct a census every ten years and the power to determine the manner in which it will be done. Congress has delegated the authority to conduct the census to the Secretary of Commerce, and explicitly requires the Secretary to “acquire and use information available from” existing government records “To the maximum extent possible ... instead of conducting direct inquiries.”

Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, takes after his boss in that he thinks the law (and the Constitution) shouldn’t apply to him. Ross announced that the 2020 census would include a new direct inquiry--“Is this person a citizen of the United States?”--instead of using already available administrative records as federal law requires. Multiple legal challenges followed immediately.

On January 15, 2019, following a seven-day trial, a federal judge in New York issued a ruling that Ross’s action was arbitrary, capricious, and “not in accordance with law.” The court found Ross’s decision “neither logical nor rational”; his purported excuses “implausible”; his claims and assertions “simply untrue”; and his supposed justifications “unsupported by, or even counter to, the evidence.” (Read the full 277-page opinion here.)

“Secretary Ross’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census -- even if it did not violate the Constitution itself -- was unlawful for a multitude of independent reasons and must be set aside. To conclude otherwise and let Secretary Ross’s decision stand would undermine the proposition -- central to the rule of law -- that ours is a ‘government of laws, and not of men.’”

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