Pratik Shah Quoted on Government Use of Census Data

For its article “Like Modi, Trump’s Plan to Count Citizens Raised Fears of Data Misuse,” on plans by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to update India’s National Population Register, The Wire news website quoted Akin Gump Supreme Court and appellate co-head Pratik Shah on the U.S.’s use—or misuse—of its own census.

The article discusses several instances in which U.S. census data was employed by the government against its own citizens, most notably in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of the Trump administration’s justification for adding a citizenship question to the census.

The article notes that an amicus brief was filed in this high court case by four Japanese Americans, among them former Secretary of Transportation and Commerce Norman Mineta, that cited the WWII-era abuse of the census in discussing the possibility of the citizenship question being used to harm Latinos and immigrants of color.

Akin Gump filed the brief on behalf of the four in that matter as amici, which also included the Korematsu Center for Law and Equality and The Council on American-Islamic Relations, with Shah as counsel of record on the brief (learn more here).

Regarding White House claims that the data collected would be confidential and not used to the respondents’ detriment, Shah, quoted from an earlier article in Huffpost India, said that U.S. history shows the contrary to be true: “The incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WW II shows that neither holds up: The government’s claims of national security threats proved false, and census data was exploited to facilitate the mass round-up. So ‘trust us’ is simply not a viable defense.”