“but on the other hand it says that it shares “the District Court’s conviction that the decision to reinstate a citizenship question cannot be adequately explained in terms of DOJ’s request for improved citizenship data to better enforce the” Voting Rights Act. “In these unusual circumstances,” the court says, “the District Court was warranted in remanding to the agency, and we affirm that disposition.””
What? The DOJ wanted to be able to compare the number of votes with the number of voters. How is that unusual?
This is so tortured.
The problem is, there is evidence in the record that the department coerced the DOJ into sending the letter asking for it, and the department was already putting the question in place before the DOJ letter.
The court actually said that is fine, that it is reasonable that a new administration might have things they want to do, but that pretending they only did it because of the DOJ letter was a joke.