Citizenship and the census: What’s at stake in Supreme Court case

“Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

That is the question at the heart of several others the U.S. Supreme Court asked Tuesday in a case concerning whether it is lawful for the Department of Commerce to include a question on citizenship in the 2020 census.

In an expanded 80-minute-long argument, the justices probed a technically complex and detailed case that could have broad and long-reaching consequences for millions of people around the country. While the core issues in the case concern the next census specifically, and the purpose of a once-a-decade census generally, the issues the justices took most interest in today examined how much deference courts should give executive agencies and their presumed expertise in areas like census-taking.

Several members of the high court, across the ideological spectrum, have expressed an interest in curbing the

Partisan lines‘Is it arbitrary and capricious?’About that constitutional question ...