Voting rights activists argue newly discovered 2015 correspondence between a GOP redistricting expert and a current Census Bureau official bolster arguments that discrimination motivated efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 population survey.
The plaintiffs said in a filing Friday that the email exchange between the late Republican consultant Thomas Hofeller and the Census Bureau official was discovered earlier this week. They say the documents give a federal judge latitude to re-examine whether Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross intended to discriminate against minorities adding the citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Judge George Hazel ruled in April to block the addition of the census question. But he said the Maryland plaintiffs failed to prove equal protection rights were violated because they couldn’t show Ross acted with discriminatory intent.
