The Trump administration is very concerned about 'probing the mental processes of a Cabinet secretary'

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published 30 October 2018

The 2020 census will ask respondents if they are U.S. citizens for the first time since 1950 — unless lawsuits challenging it succeed. But the trial for those suits should be postponed, the Trump administration argued Monday, so the Supreme Court can settle another dispute: Can Cabinet secretaries be forced to testify about their decisions under oath?

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose department administrates the census, has been ordered by a lower court judge to sit for a deposition about his rationale and intent in including the question. (A memo suggests he was the driving force behind its addition.) The administration says thus compelling a secretary to testify is unacceptable.

"[T]he real-world costs that proceeding to trial would impose on the government, especially one probing the mental processes of a Cabinet secretary to determine whether he harbors secret racial animus, would unavoidably distract the government, including the Commerce Department, 'from the energetic performance of its constitutional duties' in a manner that warrants a stay," Solicitor General Noel Francisco said in Monday's filing.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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