Big (and voluminous) news from California: in a 126-page opinion, Judge Seeborg has enjoined the inclusion of a question regarding citizenship on the 2020 census. 

The decision follows on Judge Furman’s opinion out of New York, but is more expansive: the California decision includes not just a finding on the claim that Commerce’s process violated the Administrative Procedure Act, but also that adding the question would substantively distort the conduct of the Census, and thereby violates the Enumeration Clause.  That latter finding is not (yet, technically) the subject of Supreme Court review when it hears the appeal from New York on April 23.

I’ve not been shy about my own view of the process that got the citizenship question onto the decennial census, its likely impact, the pretextual excuse for the decision, or the more plausible reasons for the whole enterprise.