WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court stepped into a political minefield Monday night by ruling that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross does not have to reveal his motives for adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 Census. Despite their desire to keep a low, nonpartisan profile following the three-month Senate battle to confirm Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the justices were forced to enter a dispute that could affect the political and financial clout of immigrant communities. The issue was whether Ross, who oversees the Census, and other officials can be questioned by lawyers for opponents seeking to block the citizenship question. The court's unsigned order specified only that Ross should be immune from questioning. Two justices – Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – dissented in part to make clear that they would have absolved other government officials as well from what they termed an "inquisition." Federal district and appeals court judges approved the deposition as recently as last month, and opponents of the citizenship question were anxious to get the information on the eve of a scheduled Nov. 5 trial in New York. Ross announced the addition of the citizenship question in March, but it has been tied up in court ever since. The government has not asked about individuals' citizenship on the Census since 1950. Opponents, including California, New York, the American Civil Liberties Union and immigration rights groups, contend fears of deportation among undocumented immigrants will cause them to be undercounted. The Census is a hard count of all people living in the United States, not just U.S. citizens. Areas with large immigrant populations, which tend to be urban and vote Democratic, could lose seats in the House of Representatives as well as federal, state and local funds used for public works and social service projects. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, among others, sought to quiz Ross because of what she told the court were "several highly unusual circumstances that called into question the accuracy and completeness of the secretary’s stated rationale for adding the citizenship question." Ross initially said the Justice Department reinstated the citizenship question as a means of enforcing the Voting Rights Act. It was later revealed that he made the decision himself and asked Justice officials to back him up, despite their reluctance. And the government recently acknowledged in court papers "for the sake of completeness" that Ross discussed the plan with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Nevertheless, U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco argued that the effort to depose Ross amounted to "an intrusive fishing expedition." Opponents, he said, should not be entitled "to probe Secretary Ross’s mental processes – his subjective motivations –when he decided to reinstate the citizenship question." More:Who is the real Brett Kavanaugh? Legal whiz kid or partisan hack? Mentor to women or beer-loving frat boy? More:Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh: The plot twists and moments that got us here More:Brett Kavanaugh's first day on the Supreme Court bench includes warm welcome – and some pinching<doc-sep>Commerce Department spokesman Kevin Manning said in an emailed statement that Ross was responding to “a question about an RNC campaign email, not a direct question about the citizenship question.” Manning added that Ross “was in fact looking at the RNC email that the Congresswoman provided him during the hearing as he was responding to Rep. Meng’s question and truthfully answered that he had not discussed the RNC email with the White House.”<doc-sep>WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Monday shielded Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross from being questioned under oath about the government’s decision to ask people on the 2020 census whether they are U.S. citizens. The court, in a brief written order, stayed the effect of a lower-court ruling that had required Mr. Ross to sit for a deposition conducted by lawyers for a group of 18 states and other plaintiffs who are challenging the lawfulness of the administration’s move to add the citizenship question. The justices, however, did leave open the challengers’ ability to gather information from elsewhere in the Trump administration, including by questioning Justice Department lawyer John Gore about his connection to the citizenship question. The court’s mixed outcome came in response to an emergency request by the Justice Department, which sought to shut down the depositions and other legal discovery sought by the plaintiffs ahead of a high-stakes trial scheduled to begin Nov. 5. The court, as is customary in emergency rulings, didn’t explain its reasoning. It gave the Justice Department until Oct. 29 to file more legal papers in the case. If the government does so, the stay protecting Mr. Ross from questioning will remain in place indefinitely while legal proceedings continue. The court’s action was one of the first that included the participation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed on Oct. 6. Two justices—conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas —registered a partial dissent, saying they would have granted all of the government’s request to shield Trump officials from being questioned. “The Supreme Court’s decision is a win for protecting the rights of the executive branch,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Kelly Laco. “The intrusive and improper discovery in this case disrupts the orderly functioning of our government and is, as Justices Gorsuch and Thomas noted, ‘highly unusual.’” While the ruling on Mr. Ross was a setback for the states that are suing, they applauded the rest of the court’s order. “We welcome the Court’s decision to allow us to complete discovery in the case, with the exception only of Sec. Ross’ deposition, which remains on hold pending further briefing,” Amy Spitalnick, spokeswoman for New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, a Democrat, wrote in an email. “We’ll get to the bottom of how the decision to demand citizenship status was made, as we continue our case to ensure a full and fair Census.” Mr. Ross, whose Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau, announced in March that the 2020 census would ask all U.S. households about citizenship status. The decennial census has asked about respondents’ citizenship at previous times in the nation’s history, including from 1890 to 1950, but hasn’t done so since. A citizenship question does appear on a different Census Bureau questionnaire, called the American Community Survey, which is sent annually to roughly 2 million households. Mr. Ross said he decided to add the census question because the Justice Department needed the data to better enforce the federal law that protects minority voting rights. New York and 17 other states, 10 cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and immigrant advocacy groups filed suit in Manhattan federal court to challenge Mr. Ross’s decision. The challengers say Mr. Ross’s actions weren’t about protecting voting rights, but instead an arbitrary policy change motivated by the Trump administration’s tough-on-immigration politics. Adding the citizenship question, they say, would significantly dampen census response rates in immigrant-heavy communities that are fearful of how the government might use the citizenship information. With fewer households responding to the census, immigrants will be undercounted, leading to less congressional seats and federal funding in their communities, the challengers allege. The Trump administration says that asking the citizenship question is plainly lawful because the Constitution grants the government discretion in deciding how to conduct the census—and because the question is consistent with historical practices. Normally, a judge reviewing a challenge to a government agency’s action would focus on the agency’s written record outlining why it reached a particular decision. Here, however, the plaintiffs argued they should be allowed to go further and question Mr. Ross and other officials directly about their motivations. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman agreed, allowing the plaintiffs to take depositions of Mr. Ross and the Department of Justice’s Mr. Gore, who was acting head of the department’s civil rights division, saying the challengers had made a strong initial showing that the government may have acted in “bad faith.” Judge Furman noted that Mr. Ross had offered shifting explanations about his role, and that of the Justice Department, in adding the citizenship question, and that he had overruled career staff who were against the idea. In written responses produced as part of the litigation, the government recently revealed that Mr. Ross last year spoke with Steve Bannon, who was serving as a Trump adviser and who’s taken a tough line on immigration, about the citizenship question. The plaintiffs say this is a change from what Mr. Ross has said previously. In its emergency filing to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department argued that Mr. Ross’s state of mind is irrelevant to deciding whether the citizenship question is lawful. The department also argued that requiring the secretary to sit for a deposition was an unwarranted intrusion into the duties of a cabinet official. The challengers argued that the depositions of Mr. Ross and Mr. Gore were key for exploring whether the government acted inappropriately. They also said that denying them the opportunity to question the officials would harm their trial preparation. The New York litigation is one of several pending cases on the citizenship question and the one on the fastest track. Cases in San Francisco and Maryland are scheduled to go to trial in January. Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com<doc-sep>
Intensifying widespread fears that the recent addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will solidify the judicial body's power to act as a legal shield for President Donald Trump's astonishingly corrupt administration, the high court ruled Monday night that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will not have to testify in a lawsuit challenging the White House's overtly discriminatory move to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. "The reason is the Supreme Court is run by Republicans who want to help other Republicans rig the 2020 Census so they can elect more Republicans." —Matt Yglesias, Vox Given that Ross appears to have lied under oath at least twice about the decision to add the citizenship question to the census—first about his central role in pushing for the addition, and then about the crucial advisory roles played by Trump's racist former aide Steve Bannon and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach—the Supreme Court's order protecting Ross from sitting for a deposition was described as a "major blow" for the coalition of civil rights groups and state attorneys general working to stop the White House from rigging the census against immigrants and communities of color. Vox's Matt Yglesias argued in a tweet on Monday that the fundamental reason the Supreme Court decided to shield Ross from testifying is because the court "is run by Republicans who want to help other Republicans rig the 2020 census so they can elect more Republicans." The reason is the Supreme Court is run by Republicans who want to help other Republicans rig the 2020 Census so they can elect more Republicans. https://t.co/KFCegTm0rA — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 23, 2018 While Ross will not have to face scrutiny for his apparently false claims—which the Daily Beast's Jay Michaelson argues "should be a national scandal"—the Supreme Court ruled that John Gore, acting chief of the Justice Department's civil rights division, will have to sit for a deposition and the legal challenge was allowed to proceed. No question that @SecretaryRoss should be deposed in this litigation given that he clearly misled Congress about why he added the citizenship question to the census. Good that plaintiffs live to fight another day on that and can depose John Gore and get all other discovery. https://t.co/6W1VUocDb0 — Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) October 23, 2018 "We welcome the Court's decision to allow us to complete discovery in the case, with the exception only of Secretary Ross' deposition, which remains on hold pending further briefing," Amy Spitalnick, the spokesperson for New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, said in a statement. "We'll get to the bottom of how the decision to demand citizenship status was made, as we continue our case to ensure a full and fair census." Reacting to the Supreme Court's order, critics argued that the protection of Ross from testifying is a sign of things to come for a court pushed even further right by the confirmation of Kavanaugh: According to the civil rights organizations challenging the White House's census changes, the addition of a citizenship question would promote fear among already underrepresented minority and immigrant communities and deprive them of much-needed federal funding. "If implemented, this harmful and costly decision would have far reaching implications for Latinos and all Americans, depressing response rates and threatening the fair and equitable distribution of political representation and billions of dollars in federal funding," Arturo Vargas, chief executive officer of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, argued in a statement in August. "We will continue to fight against the addition of this question in both Congress and the courts."