Press Release

Today, Common Cause amended its challenge to President Trump’s memorandum requiring the exclusion of undocumented people from being counted in the census for congressional apportionment, adding new co-plaintiffs and new causes of action. The amended complaint in Common Cause v. Trump now includes the City of Dayton, Ohio; the City of Portland, Oregon, five new organizational plaintiffs, and a total of sixteen (16) additional individual plaintiffs of diverse backgrounds from California, Texas, and New Jersey (in addition to preexisting individual plaintiffs from Florida and New York). 

Americans expect and deserve more from their President in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis than a photo op and phony posturing at a golf club. Unwilling and unable to negotiate with Congress to deliver a relief package to a nation reeling from COVID-19, President Trump resorted to unconstitutional half measures that will do little to address the serious issues facing the nation.

Recent actions from Facebook and Twitter to remove posts from President Trump containing COVID-19 misinformation show that the platforms have much more work to do to combat attacks on our democracy including the spread of election disinformation and voter suppression. Facebook works with fact-checking organizations to review and rate COVID-19 related content, uses tools to downrank COVID-19 misinformation, and directs users to authoritative sources on COVID-19 information. At the same time, Facebook refuses to fact-check political ads despite containing deceptive information that could suppress votes. Twitter has responded to the spread of COVID-19 misinformation by revising its policy on what is considered harmful content and adding labels to tweets with misinformation about the virus. Yet, Twitter has not taken adequate action to consistently enforce and expand its election integrity policies when it comes to tweets from the President that contain election disinformation.  

The right to vote is the very foundation of our democracy. Born of the horrible injustices and rampant voter suppression of the Jim Crow South, the Voting Rights Act, which turns 55 today, fully protected the right to vote for nearly five decades. That changed when the horribly misguided ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder gutted the Voting Rights Act. In the wake of that decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, voter suppression has flourished and Americans have been systematically stripped of their ability to cast a ballot in numbers not seen since the Jim Crow era.

The Census is the bedrock of our democracy, and we cannot afford to politicize the count. But that is exactly what political appointees to the Census Bureau are doing in reversing course and shortening the enumeration period against the recommendations of career staff who insisted they required additional time to conduct an accurate census count during the COVID-19 pandemic.