Census Case A Bust For Trump; Opposing Lawyers Now Awarded Legal Fees

In a nonpublic settlement, the Justice Department has agreed to pay $2.7 million in legal fees for the New York Immigration Coalition, which successfully opposed the Trump administration’s attempt to get a citizenship question on the 2020 census. A federal court in New York, and then the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled against the Commerce Department, with the Supreme Court calling its ostensible reason for wanting to include the question “contrived.” Then, early this month, DOJ signed off on the settlement to pay the NYIC’s legal expenses. The group was represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. The NYIC has also requested the imposition of sanctions, arguing that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross misrepresented the rationale for wanting to include the question by claiming it was to enforce the voting rights act when the real reason was to suppress the political power of minorities.