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Judge Blocks DOJ From Replacing Lawyers in Census Citizenship Question Case

Judge Furman wrote that the Justice Department failed to provide “satisfactory reasons” to pull its legal team.

A federal judge blocked the Justice Department’s move to replace the legal team handling the administration’s effort to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census, The New York Times reports. In a filing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman said the government gave “no reasons, let alone ‘satisfactory reasons,’” to ditch the team and replace the lawyers with new ones. Only two lawyers who have since departed from the DOJ and its Civil Division will be allowed to leave, the judge ruled. On Sunday, the DOJ said it would be replacing its legal team on the case without providing a specific explanation. “[The] Defendants’ mere ‘expect[ation] that withdrawal of current counsel will [not] cause any disruption’ is not good enough, particularly given the circumstances of this case,” Furman wrote.