On Monday night, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that he will ask about the citizenship of every person in the U.S. in the 2020 census. He is doing this at the request of the Justice Department, against the advice of the Census Bureau’s career professionals, civil rights groups, and communities across the country. He has admitted that adding this question was “controversial.”

The Constitution requires that the federal government conduct a census every 10 years. The Fourteenth Amendment mandates that the decennial census count the “whole number of persons in each State.” Yet adding the citizenship question threatens exactly this goal by intimidating citizens and non-citizens alike from participating in a process which directly affects their lives. This decision is just the latest in the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrant communities and other vulnerable populations. It puts politics over democratic principles and the consequences will be enormous.

Research from the Census Bureau just last year identified how the current political environment may intimidate individuals in already hard-to-count communities from responding to the decennial census. In fact, the research was prompted by a “recent increase in respondents spontaneously expressing concerns to researchers and field staff about confidentiality and data access relating to immigration.” Participants in focus groups specifically talked about Trump’s anti-immigrant policies like the Muslim ban and his ramp up of deportations as reasons they would fear participating in the census. Driving down response rates in certain racial and ethnic groups not only threatens the integrity of census data, it harms those very communities.

The federal government depends on decennial census data to decide how many Congressional representatives each state receives and states rely on this data to draw the districts for their own legislatures. Adding a citizenship question and depressing response rates in already underrepresented communities will allow politicians to draw even more skewed legislative districts. It will also harm federal and state government efforts to accurately distribute funds to communities based on population in everything from Medicaid to school-lunch programs to veterans’ assistance. As Ross is well aware, the census has already struggled to accurately count the numbers of many non-white groups. Inserting this question threatens the progress made over the previous two censuses.

The political decision to add a citizenship question becomes even plainer when looking at the context for the Justice Department’s request. The Department of Commerce was required to submit to Congress the topics of its proposed questions last March in order to ensure the chance to provide input and test the wording of questions. Yet citizenship was not among the topics submitted to Congress and was rushed into consideration because of a late request from John Gore, the acting assistant attorney general in the civil rights division and a Trump political appointee.

Five former directors of the census, serving in both Republican and Democratic administrations, have opposed this decision. The Justice Department argued that citizenship data is critical to the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, yet the decennial census has not included a citizenship question since 1950 (which the exception of New York and Puerto Rico in 1960). In fact, the Justice Department already has citizenship data available to it, which is collected through smaller population surveys that can be adjusted statistically to account for people who don’t respond. The critical difference is that the decennial census is an actual hard count of the population, and if someone doesn’t respond because they are intimidated, they simply go uncounted.

Democracy requires that the census count people in all communities, not just those whom the administration favors.

A 17-year-old Robert McQueen High School junior was suspended Wednesday after Rep. Mark Amodei’s office complained to administration about a call the student had made to his office. 

Noah C. had never had so much as a detention before, is a model student, and a major player on his school’s debate team. He had just been elected class secretary/treasurer but will not be able to serve in that role due to this unconstitutional suspension.

Noah and dozens of his classmates called their representatives during Wednesday’s nationwide school walkouts over gun violence. During his call with Congressman Amodei’s office, Noah advocated for the Congressman to vote to raise the minimum age to buy a gun and to ban bump stocks.  He then made a passionate plea for members of Congress to “get off their fucking asses” and take action on gun violence and keep students safe.

After this call, a staffer from Congressman Amodei’s office called Noah’s school and, in an act of unconstitutional retaliation, reported this conversation as “offensive.” Noah was then suspended for two days for “disrespectful behavior/language,” even though none of his speech was directed at school staff or other students.

Noah recognizes he should have chosen his words more carefully, but students – like everyone else – have a right to criticize government officials, even with swear words.

"Being yelled at for calling my representative and trying to create change in the world is one of the worst feelings I've ever experienced. All I want is for this suspension to be overturned and to take my place as class secretary, so I can move on to college with my record restored. I've never even had a detention before let alone a suspension," Noah said.

“My son is a good student and has never had behavioral problems. It was extreme to suspend him, and the school couldn’t even tell me if they had any legal basis to do it,” Stacie, Noah’s mom, said.

Noah’s dad, Richard, said: “My son is a great kid. It’s absolutely despicable and disgusting the school did this.”

The ACLU of Nevada on Monday sent a demand letter to McQueen High School and the Washoe County School District seeking to have the suspension overturned. A letter was also sent to Congressman Amodei to remind him that students do have rights under the First Amendment and requests that he retract his office’s complaint and apologize to Noah.

ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Tod Story said:

“It is unbelievable that a constituent should have to worry about calling a Congressional office to share their opinions because your congressman’s office might retaliate against you by reporting you to your school or place of employment. The retaliation by Congressman Amodei’s office is a betrayal of the First Amendment and of the representative process. Nothing this constituent did was illegal, and we hope Congressman Amodei would be as interested in the opinions of students as anyone who seeks to ‘petition the government.’”

Read the letter to the Washoe County School District

Letter to Robert McQueen HS_ACLU.pdf

Read the letter to Rep. Amodei

Amodei letter

Johnnie Rush, a Black resident of Asheville, North Carolina, was brutalized by police simply for jaywalking late at night. His story is yet another in the seemingly endless, endemic tragedy of police violence against people of color. Unlike many of those, it was all caught on video.

Rush was walking home after a 13-hour shift washing dishes at a local restaurant when he was approached by two white police officers. It was after midnight, and one of the officers told Rush that he failed to use the crosswalk.

“All I’m trying to do is go home, man,” Rush said. “I’m tired. I just got off work.” “I’ve got two options,” replied Verino Ruggiero, an officer in training. “I can either arrest you or write you a ticket.” “It doesn’t matter, man,” Rush said. “Do what you got to do besides keep harassing me.”

Video of the exchange, and subsequent use of excessive force by police, was captured by a body camera worn by Chris Hickman, the officer who was training Ruggiero. Hickman orders Rush to put his hands behind his back. Rush curses and runs. The officers chase him and tackle him to the ground.

After they pinned Rush to the ground, Hickman beat his skull with a closed fist, shocked him with a Taser, and appeared to choke him. With officer Hickman’s hands around his neck, Rush shouts out several times, “I can’t breathe.”

The officers who assaulted Rush charged him with second-degree trespassing, impeding traffic, assaulting a government official, and resisting a public officer.

Rush told local news outlets that the officers’ supervisor did not believe his account of what happened, even as they sent him to a hospital to treat his wounds. The charges were dropped, however, after a district attorney reviewed footage from Hickman’s body camera. Hickman was eventually ordered to turn in his gun and badge, according to reports. He ultimately resigned.

While the incident occurred on August 25, 2017, the public did not learn about or see the body camera footage of Hickman beating Rush until the recording was leaked to the Asheville Citizen-Times on February 28, 2018. The video’s publication six months after it was recorded sent shockwaves through the city of Asheville. But the community should never have had to wait that long. It should have seen the video directly following the incident.

Within a week of the video’s release, Hickman was arrested and charged with assault, and members of the Asheville City Council called for the police chief to resign. The FBI has now opened its own investigation.

This series of events shows racial bias at play, the scourge of excessive force by police, and both the power and limits of body camera technology to ensure police accountability. Injustice was captured by an officer-worn body camera but never released to the public. Without transparency, body cameras aren’t worth a damn.

But the Asheville police department doesn’t seem too concerned with transparency.

Asheville’s police chief, Tammy Hooper, disturbingly threatened to investigate and charge whoever “unlawful[ly]” leaked the footage, which only highlights how both the culture and policies of the police need to be changed. Had the footage not become public, Hickman may not have been charged with assaulting Rush. Without the footage, community members would not know to call for reforms. And reforms that include implicit bias training, deescalation training, and better data collection on stops and searches are sorely needed.

While there are good privacy reasons, in certain instances, for not making all body camera footage public, this is not one of those times. When a video captures police use of force – particularly when officers are abusing their power and brutalizing a community member, the public has a right to see that video. State laws, like the one we have in North Carolina, that prevent or limit the release of body-cam footage not only block transparency — they also block people’s right to justice.

Chief Hooper should concentrate on ending her officers’ racially biased and violent policing tactics rather than finding the leaker who made justice possible. It’s clear that the Asheville Police Department needs to do a better job at hiring good officers and training them to treat all communities with dignity. Hooper has an opportunity now to show communities of color that justice is not a hollow promise but a reality for all.