Akin Gump served as lead pro bono counsel on an amici curiae brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a group of social justice organizations and individuals supporting a challenge to the federal government’s addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Amici include former U.S. Commerce Secretary and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (national and New York chapter), and three U.S. citizens of Japanese descent whose removal and incarceration during World War II (among over 120,000 others) was facilitated by the Census Bureau’s sharing of confidential data.
Pratik Shah, co-head of Akin Gump’s Supreme Court and appellate practice, said, “Based on the fraught history of the census, the government’s addition of a suspect citizenship question threatens to erode public trust and undermine the fulfillment of its constitutional census duty.”
Joining Mr. Shah on the Akin Gump team are litigation partners Robert Pees and Julius Chen, corporate partner Alice Hsu, and labor and employment associate Geoffrey Derrick.
The case, to be argued April 23, is Department of Commerce, et al. v. State of New York, et al., No. 18-966.
To read the brief in its entirety, please click here.