Why the Supreme Court’s Rulings Have Profound Implications for American Politics

[Here’s what you need to know about the debate over adding a citizenship question to the census.]

But by ruling that the Trump administration offered no credible reason for proposing the question, the justices placed a daunting hurdle before the government, which must print questionnaires and other 2020 census documents within months, if not weeks, to keep the head count on schedule.

The administration would have to create a new rationale for adding the question and win the approval of a skeptical district court, which ruled that its stated reason for the question — to better enforce the Voting Rights Act — was a bald contrivance hiding some other motive.

“We are disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision today,” said Kelly Laco, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, which she said “will continue to defend this administration’s lawful exercises of executive power.”

The Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, did not have an immediate comment.

After the ruling on the citizenship question, President Trump took to Twitter to question why his administration was not allowed to ask what he called “a basic question” and said he was inquiring into whether the census could be postponed so that the justices could make a “final and decisive decision” on the matter.

But the issue could take months to resolve.

A second census lawsuit was reopened this month in federal court in Maryland, where opponents of the question claim that new evidence proves that the question is an unconstitutional effort to discriminate against Hispanics for political gain. That proceeding, which the justices made no effort to stop on Thursday, appears likely to stretch at least into late August.

In theory, the government could clear those barriers, appeal any adverse rulings and still tack the question onto the 2020 questionnaire, Cary Coglianese, a law professor who directs the Penn Program on Regulation at the University of Pennsylvania, said on Thursday. “But I struggle to see the path by which the citizenship question ends up on the 2020 census form,” he added.

In their rulings on Thursday, the justices stated pointedly that their decisions were legal opinions, not political ones.