Opponents of the Trump administration's plan to ask about citizenship on the 2020 census have alerted the U.S. Supreme Court of what they call "smoking gun" evidence that government officials lied in sworn testimony about their rationale for adding the question.
The submission, a letter Thursday from ACLU attorney Dale Ho, who argued the case before the court last month, comes as the justices have been deliberating on the case and expected to hand down their decision within weeks.
"The new evidence reveals that Dr. Thomas Hofeller, a longtime redistricting specialist, played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, 'Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,'" Ho writes.
"Petitioners [the Commerce Department] obscured his role through affirmative misrepresentations," he said.
The evidence could call into question the administration's claims that the citizenship question was specifically requested by the Justice Department to aid enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. Government officials have denied allegations of bald politics or racial discrimination as true motives.
News of Hofeller's role was first reported by the New York Times.
Hofeller, well-known in Republican circles as a tactician, had extensively studied the value of citizenship data in gerrymandering. He died last year.
the facts explain it you putin ass leach
