[20180406]LSB10114_商务部宣布2020年人口普查公民身份问题并提起诉讼.pdf

CRS INSIGHT Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress Legal SidebarLegal Sidebari i Commerce Department Announces Citizenship Question on 2020 Census and Lawsuits Filed April 6, 2018 On March 26, 2018, the Commerce Department, which houses the U.S. Census Bureau, announced that the 2020 decennial census questionnaire will include a citizenship question. Thereafter, the State of California and a coalition of states and cities led by the State of New York filed lawsuits to stop Commerce from including the question, generally arguing that including a citizenship question would suppress the census response rate and result in undercounts that would violate the U.S. Constitutions mandate to count every resident. Commerce maintains, among other things, that inclusion of the citizenship question in the census questionnaire to the entire U.S. population will produce census block level data on “citizenship voting age population” (CVAP) that is more accurate and complete than current data, thereby outweighing concerns of a lower response rate, and that such data will assist the Department of Justice in enforcing the Voting Rights Act. This sidebar provides an overview of the Commerce De