Akin Gump Files Amended Amicus Brief Challenging 2020 Census Citizenship Question

(New York) – Akin Gump has filed an amici curiae brief on behalf of a group of individuals and nonprofits supporting the coalition of state plaintiffs challenging the government’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. The amici include the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, New York (CAIR-NY), former U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and four U.S. citizens of Japanese descent whose incarceration during World War II was partly due to the Census Bureau’s cooperation and sharing of data with the War Department.

The brief filed today supports plaintiffs at trial and follows an earlier one that the same amici submitted at the motion to dismiss stage of the census litigation. Today’s trial amici brief argues that the history of the Japanese American incarceration cases should inform the court’s decision at trial of whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s stated justification for the citizenship question — to better enforce the Voting Rights Act — “was a pretext for a desire to harm Latinos and immigrants of color.” The amici ask the court “to remember the lessons of the Japanese American incarceration cases when performing that role, and to ensure that the government is not allowed to again assert pretextual justifications for actions that violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” Coram nobis petitions in the 1980s led to the revelation that, during World War II, the Solicitor General’s Office offered the Supreme Court pretextual justifications for the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Akin Gump filed today’s brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York where a trial is scheduled to begin on November 5. The case is State of New York et al. v. United States Secretary of Commerce et al., No. 18-2921.

The Akin Gump team working on the brief included corporate partner Alice Hsu; litigation partner Robert H. Pees, and labor and employment associate Geoffrey J. Derrick.

Please click here to view a copy of the brief.

Founded in 1945, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is a leading international law firm with more than 900 lawyers in offices throughout the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

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