In a surprising ruling, the Supreme Court has just prevented the Trump administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census — at least, for now.
Supreme Court stops Trump’s census citizenship question — for now
The Census Bureau has to give a better explanation of why the question was added. But time is running out to finalize forms for 2020.
The opinion — which was partly unanimous, with several different splits among other justices in other sections of the case — in the case Department of Commerce v. New York, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, partially upheld a January ruling from Southern District of New York Judge Jesse Furman. Furman ruled that the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the census violated US law by being “arbitrary and capricious,” since the Trump administration’s stated reasoning for adding the question (to help enforce the Voting Rights Act) was shown at trial to be an after-the-fact rationalization.
While Roberts rejected most of Furman’s arguments, he believed that Furman was correct to send the citizenship question back to the Census Bureau for further explanation of why it was needed, preventing it from being added to the census forms for now.
The decision is surprising because the court’s conservative majority was expected to side with the administration and allow the citizenship question to move forward. But it’s not clear what this does to the timing of the 2020 census — whose forms were supposed to be finalized before Monday.
Read the opinion here.
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