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...Ross sought to amend the decennial Census to add the controversial question: "Is this person a citizen of the United States?"[80]

New York solicitor general Barbara Underwood led a lawsuit filed by 18 states and many cities to attempt to stop the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.[81][82] The Department of Justice supported the Department of Commerce.

U.S. federal judge Jesse M. Furman ruled against the Department of Justice and Wilbur Ross, stating that if the trial is delayed the appeals process may not be done by summer 2019, the printing deadline of the census.[82] Furman blocked the census question proposal on January 15, 2019, saying Ross had violated a "veritable smorgasbord" of federal rules, asserting Ross and his aides made false or misleading statements under oath[83] and that he sought to add the question to the Census based on a pretext.[84]
The House of Representatives held Ross in contempt of Congress and accused Ross of lying about the citizenship question's origins.[85] Specifically, Ross had testified under oath that the addition of the question was prompted by DOJ when in fact he had made the request via the Hofeller letter he had transmitted.
It became known in July 2021 that the Justice Department inspector general had determined Ross had misled Congress, but the Trump Justice Department declined to prosecute him.[86]

Contempt of Congress
Ross and the Trump administration refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, issued by the House Oversight Committee, for documents regarding efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.[87] After Trump asserted executive privilege over the subpoenaed documents, the House Oversight Committee voted to hold Ross and Attorney General William Barr in criminal contempt of Congress, with the committee's chairman saying that Ross and Barr had "blatantly obstructed our ability to do congressional oversight."[85][84] In June 2019, the House held Barr and Ross in contempt of Congress on a mostly party-line 230–198 vote; this was only the second time in U.S. history that a sitting Cabinet member was held in contempt.[84][85] The vote signified an escalation of the House of Representatives' battles with the Trump White House over congressional oversight, but was largely symbolic as Trump's Justice Department did not act on the criminal citation.