WASHINGTON — A new team of Civil Division lawyers at the Department of Justice will take over handling 2020 census-related cases, a spokeswoman for the agency said on Sunday, a shake-up that came as President Donald Trump pushes to include a contentious citizenship question in the decennial population survey. On Friday, the DOJ told Maryland-based U.S. District Judge George Hazel it had not made a final determination on whether to add the question. Civil rights groups and some states strongly object to the citizenship question proposal, calling it a Republican ploy to scare immigrants into not participating in the census. He has noted that the Supreme Court didn’t say this can’t be asked. The administration had originally told the courts the question was needed to better enforce a law that protects the voting rights of racial minorities.

Source: National Post July 08, 2019 00:51 UTC