SCOTUS's ruling was for Commerce to "try again" and provide a rationale that wasn't a lie - Roberts more or less signalled that provided they aren't egregiously incompetent and corrupt he'd let them add the question. Commerce had argued - both at the District Court and SCOTUS, that June 30 was a deadline. But a government witness also had testified that in reality that given the resources, they could actually push that deadline into October. The plaintiffs actually argued today when DOJ called into the district court today, "We just gonna ignore that they have repeatedly argued that June 30 was the deadline and now they're saying actually we have time to consider our path forward?" and the judge was like "You're right, but asking them that is unlikely to give us a useful answer so..."
The Constitution is pretty clear that the census is to count all "persons" in the US as opposed to all "citizens." Even a literal/textual interpretation of the Constitution would have a hard time trying to handwave this away. The Constitution uses both words so if it wanted citizen there it should have used it. Indeed, it very intentionally avoids it because, among other things, this is where the 3/5ths compromise is inserted. The clause that mandates the census includes the whole "plus 3/5 of all slaves (lit. "three fifths of all other Persons)" part.
I'd argue it was an oversight, and I would assume a Supreme Court would agree with that (though who knows). Because if non-citizens cannot vote then why are there numbers basically given a vote with extra representatives and electoral votes. If you think they should count towards representation, they should be allowed to vote if you follow along the path of what it means.
That is the big issue with that. In fact, I don't understand why they don't just state illegal immigrants can't fill out the census at all. (Which of course you can't do until you can ask them to provide citizenship).
Instead of courting around the issue of it maybe going towards giving information to deport illegals. Why allow them to even fill it out in the first place. It clearly doesn't make sense it was intended as literal (though I could see the argument for it).
Because it was the explicit intent of the founding fathers to count non-voting persons. They explicitly said how to count slaves - as 3/5 of a free person. They also explicitly counted women and non-property owning men as 1 whole free person, even though neither of those were guaranteed voting privileges at the time.
Yes, but I am saying I doubt they explicitly considered people who illegally enter the country and committed a crime. Like, 30 million people could illegally cross the border between now and the census and run up Electoral numbers insanely for a state or two and be deported. It's basically false numbers and were gained by illegal means. I just disagree with it. ---
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