Pascrell Statement on Census, Gerrymandering Supreme Court Decisions

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today commented on the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Commerce v. New York essentially disallowing a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, while condemning the Court’s 5-to-4 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause holding that federal courts cannot assess the constitutionality of partisan gerrymanders.

“I am pleasantly surprised that the Court has halted Donald Trump from including a citizenship question on the 2020 Census for now. Our national count is sacred, and Trump’s attempt to corrupt it is born of divisive racism to further imbalance our political system towards rural areas at the expense of disenfranchising minority communities. This debasement is about cementing right-wing political power and nothing else. My hope now is that the lower courts will weigh the overwhelming evidence of lying, malfeasance, and corruption at the highest levels of this administration.

“The Court’s decision to permanently restrict our federal courts from striking down egregious gerrymanders is dreadful for our democracy. This holding gives the green light for states to pass undemocratic maps that will backdoor racial discrimination. It will result in more elections where the party that gets the most votes receives a minority of seats. No democracy can long survive this, and Americans and Congress must continue to fight gerrymandering at the state level. And this decision again reminds us that we must also reform our High Court. Through decades of efforts Republicans have badly corrupted our greatest judicial arbiter to carry out their unpopular agenda – at the expense of the impartial administration of justice and even the health of democracy itself.”

The new Democratic Congress has been dedicated to ending partisan gerrymandering. H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2019, would require all states to pass their congressional lines through nonpartisan methods and was passed by the House of Representatives 234-to-193 on March 8, 2019.

Representing one of the most vibrantly diverse districts in the nation, Rep. Pascrell has been one of the leaders in Congress sounding the alarm on the negative impacts of Trump’s attack on the Census. In an April 22 op-ed in the Star Ledger, Pascrell warned that Trump’s politicization of the Census through the inclusion of a citizenship question would pose “devastating” consequences for America and “risk[] the undercounting of minority-rich, immigrant-driven communities across America” and especially in “diverse states like New Jersey.”

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