Breaking: a federal judge in New York BLOCKED the Trump administration’s attempt to add a question about citizenship status to the 2020 Census.

This is a huge victory in the fight against this discriminatory question, which the administration conspired to add to the census. Experts who worked on the census in Republican and Democratic administrations are concerned that it could result in an undercount of key communities. And today, the court found exactly that: that there will in fact be an undercount of communities with high populations of immigrants and people of color if the citizenship question is left on the 2020 questionnaire. According to Robert Shapiro, who ran the 2000 census, the citizenship question could dissuade more than 24 million people from filling out the census.

Keeping this question off of the census is a huge priority for redistricting. The 2020 Census will affect reapportionment and the underlying data on how maps get drawn in 2021. By purposefully undercounting certain communities, the Trump administration would be robbing them of political power for a decade — not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for education, infrastructure, health care, and other critical programs.

Today’s court ruling is a huge win, but the fight isn’t over yet. The Trump administration is expected to swiftly appeal today’s ruling to the Second Circuit, and it is anticipated that the Supreme Court will have the last word on the question before June, when the Census Bureau has to finalize the questionnaire. The citizenship question could still appear on the 2020 Census.

We have to keep up our efforts to advocate for a census that is fair to all communities. Will you chip in to help the NDRC and our allies keep pushing for a fair and accurate census?

— Team NDRC