The Trump administration told a federal judge Tuesday it has made a “final” decision not to ask about citizenship in the 2020 Census, an attorney in one of the lawsuits against the government told The Daily Beast. Denise Hulett, counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund (MALDEF), said the government agreed in a hearing to file a stipulation that the forms would be printed without the question. The Supreme Court last week blocked the plan to ask respondents if they are citizens, sending a lawsuit back down to a lower court to resolve questions about whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross lied about the true reasons for adding the question. After the loss, President Trump threatened to delay printing of the census forms to buy the government more time to win in court. The Justice Department said Tuesday that the Census Bureau would begin printing forms without the question, which would have undercounted millions of Hispanics, according to the Trump administration’s own estimate. Recently unearthed documents show the question was formulated by a Republican operative to benefit “non-Hispanic whites.”
