Census Judge Denies Trump Administration's Bid for New Team

 Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto As the Supreme Court justices hear oral arguments over the 2020 census citizenship question, protesters have gathered outside the building in support of a fair and accurate census and demanding to not include the controversial question in the next census. Tuesday, April 23, 2019, Washington, D.C. (Photo by Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

8 July 2019

(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge rejected a request by the Trump administration to assign a new legal team to a lawsuit that blocked the U.S. from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan called the government’s request “patently deficient,” adding that the U.S. had provided “no reasons, let alone ’satisfactory reasons,’ for the substitution of counsel."

Government officials have been searching for a way to insert the citizenship question on the census following a Supreme Court ruling that put the administration’s plan on hold because its rationale for the query was “contrived.” The forms for the once-a-decade headcount must be prepared soon to meet the deadline for 2020.

QuickTake: Are You a Citizen? The Trump Census Question on Trial

The Trump administration initially accepted the Supreme Court’s ruling and said it had begun printing forms without the question. But in a tweet, Trump subsequently ordered the government to re-examine the issue, prompting the Justice Department to seek alternative ways to proceed.

The Trump administration hasn’t detailed why it sought to replace the U.S. lawyers handling the lawsuit. The Washington Post, citing a person familiar with the matter, said that some of the original lawyers on the case had concerns about the way the government was handling it.

Read More: ACLU Objects to Trump Replacing Legal Team in Census Query Fight

The Justice Department’s "mere expectation that withdrawal of current counsel will not cause any disruption is not good enough," Furman wrote in an order on Tuesday.
(Updates with background of case.)

To contact the reporters on this story: Bob Van Voris in federal court in Manhattan at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net;Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net
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