Census citizenship question would benefit 'Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,' its orchestrator said

Lawyers fighting a proposed census citizenship question have claimed it would dilute congressional representation for Democrats and Hispanics. New evidence suggests that was the question's intention all along.

Plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Commerce Department's proposed addition sent a letter to District Court Judge Jesse Furman on Thursday alerting him to new evidence in the case. That evidence revealed the GOP's "Michelangelo of gerrymandering" Thomas Hofeller "played a crucial role in the Trump administration's decision" to add the question, The New York Times reports. And Hofeller made that suggestion because, in his own words, it "would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites."

Hofeller, a storied Republican consultant, died last summer, and his daughter unearthed his hard drives containing data she thought would aid in a case against North Carolina's gerrymandered districts. But they also revealed he had studied Texas' legislative districts and concluded that, if they were based on a count of voting-age U.S. citizens instead of a total population, they "would exclude traditionally Democratic Hispanics and their children from the population count" and "translate into fewer districts in traditionally Democratic areas," the Times writes.

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All that couldn't happen "without a question on citizenship being included on the 2020 Decennial Census questionnaire," Hofeller continued. So, as a Trump transition official in charge of census issues testified, Hofeller encouraged the incoming Trump administration to add it.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced the addition of a question of citizenship on the 2020 census last March to help enforce the Voting Rights Act. Several lawsuits have since challenged that explanation, and several judges, including Furman, have so far blocked the question from being added. The Supreme Court heard arguments on the case in April, and is expected to deliver a decision in June.