Alabama v. Department of Commerce

On December 13, 2018, during the bench trial in the Southern District of New York, the State of Alabama, along with other states and local governments, challenged the U.S. Department of Commerce and Secretary Wilbur Ross over the decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. Plaintiffs argued that Secretary Ross violated the Administrative Procedure Act by acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and that the question would suppress responses in immigrant communities, causing a severe undercount. The trial included testimony revealing that the rationale provided by the Department—to enforce the Voting Rights Act—was a pretext, as evidence showed political motivations behind the decision. This case was part of a consolidated multidistrict litigation.

On January 15, 2019, Judge Jesse M. Furman of the Southern District of New York blocked the addition of the citizenship question, ruling that Secretary Ross violated the Administrative Procedure Act. The Supreme Court subsequently affirmed this result in Department of Commerce v. New York on June 27, 2019, holding that the stated rationale for the question was pretextual. The Trump administration ultimately abandoned its effort to add the question and proceeded with the 2020 Census without it.

The central dispute focused on whether the Secretary of Commerce's decision to add a citizenship question violated the Administrative Procedure Act by being arbitrary and capricious, and whether the addition would irreparably harm the accuracy of the decennial population count, thereby violating the Enumeration Clause of the Constitution. A key issue was whether the stated Voting Rights Act enforcement rationale was pretextual.

The litigation had a profound impact on the 2020 Census, protecting the enumeration process from a citizenship question that experts widely agreed would have caused a significant undercount of immigrant and minority communities. This undercount would have shifted political representation and federal funding allocations for the next decade. The Supreme Court's decision reinforced the principle that federal agencies must provide genuine, non-pretextual rationales for major policy decisions subject to judicial review. The case also highlighted the critical importance of an accurate census to the functioning of American democracy and the allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal resources.