2020 census form. Photo: Maria Dryfhout/Shutterstock.com

The 2020 U.S. Census will not ask respondents about their immigration status, the Trump administration confirmed Tuesday, after a series of legal challenges led to a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court striking down the question last month.

The decision puts to bed more than a year of litigation brought against the Trump administration by civil rights groups and several states, including New York, which led one of the lawsuits against the federal government over the question.

New York Attorney General Letitia James called the development a “victory,” after the country's highest court questioned the motive of the Trump administration last month for choosing to ask about citizenship on the national survey.

“Today's news is a victory for New York state, for America, and for every single person in this nation,” James said. “While the Trump administration may have attempted to politicize the census and punish cities and states across the nation, justice prevailed, and the census will continue to remain a tool for obtaining an accurate count of our population.”

New York filed its lawsuit over the question with a coalition of other states almost immediately after the addition of the question was announced by the U.S. Department of Commerce. They had alleged the question was motivated by racial animus and a long-term strategy by the Trump administration to give Republicans more power in Congress.

That lawsuit was combined with another against the citizenship question from the New York Immigration Coalition last year for trial, which was held in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York.

They've argued that asking about citizenship on the census would lower turnout for the survey in areas with high immigrant populations, like New York. That could lead to a population undercount, they claimed, which could have resulted in fewer seats in Congress for those states. It could have also meant less federal funding in areas like education and health care.

The New York Immigration Coalition was represented by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union, both of which have used information obtained through discovery to push the case forward.

They claimed that U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross had already decided when he took office in 2017 that he wanted to ask about citizenship on the census, and that he didn't go through the proper channels to justify the addition. They, along with New York, sued based on several claims, but chief among them was the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in striking down the question last month, criticized the administration's methods of adding the question to the survey.

“Reasoned decision-making under the Administrative Procedure Act calls for an explanation for agency action,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote. “What was provided here was more of a distraction.”

Ross, in a statement released Tuesday evening, said he disagreed with the high court's decision, but that the clock had run out on other options before the census had to be printed.

“I respect the Supreme Court but strongly disagree with its ruling regarding my decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 Census,” Ross said. “The Census Bureau has started the process of printing the decennial questionnaires without the question. My focus and that of the bureau and the entire department is to conduct a complete and accurate census.”

Ross and the U.S. Department of Justice have said they wanted to include a question about citizenship on the census to better help the federal government enforce the Voting Rights Act.

U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York had originally struck down the citizenship question in a decision handed down earlier this year.

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