SCOTUS - cannot use Citizenship Question (for now)

Supreme Court: No census citizenship question for now, need clarified agency explanation

In a complicated ruling, the Supreme Court substantially upheld the inclusion of a census question regarding citizenship, but procedurally held that more inquiry was needed into C0mmerce Dept. reasoning in seeking to add the question.

In Convoluted Ruling, SCOTUS Blocks Citizenship Question On Census

This is very complicated and I’m not going to try to describe in detail every aspect of the decision. There were multiple parts to this and multiple votes on those parts. The short of it is that SCOTUS ruled that the question itself is constitutional and does not violate the Census Act, but they also ruled that the Commerce Department did not give a sufficient explanation during judicial review, thereby they can’t use the question.

Or was it remanded back to the lower court as some are suggesting?

Okay, right back to where we started.  We had a portion of this 5-4 with Roberts with the liberals on another part, and 5-4 with Roberts with the other conservatives on another part, While it was 7-0 in terms of whether or not the question was legally valid.

But as the dissent suggests, the court did not just want to decide the legal issue (7-0). They waded into more uncharted legal areas which is where they split multiple times.

According to some legal analysts, this is not so much a hard decision, as it is a delay. There may (or may not) be enough time for the Commerce Department to give a better explanation or there may not be a better decision available.

 It seems ironic that they determine "not" to wade into the Gerrymandering cases (due to lack of jurisdiction). But decide to wade into this one (which isn't legally a partisan issue). This seems to be a challenge to the idea that courts only overrule legislative or executive decisions when those decisions are "arbitrary".

From one of the dissents:

In March 2018, the Secretary of Commerce exercised his broad discretion over the administration of the decennial census to resume a nearly unbroken practice of asking a question relating to citizenship. Our only role in this case is to decide whether the Secretary complied with the law and gave a reasoned explanation for his decision. The Court correctly answers these questions in the affirmative. Ante, at 11–23. That ought to end our inquiry.

The Court, however, goes further. For the first time ever, the Court invalidates an agency action solely because it questions the sincerity of the agency’s otherwise adequate rationale….

The Court’s holding reflects an unprecedented departure from our deferential review of discretionary agency decisions. And, if taken seriously as a rule of decision, this holding would transform administrative law. It is not difficult for political opponents of executive actions to generate controversy with accusations of pretext, deceit, and illicit motives.

What's clear as mud here is that nobody really knows what the $%^* this ruling means. This has been an unfortunate staple of the "Roberts Court". Whenever Roberts decides to break with the conservatives on some highly political issue, it takes about 500 pages, and legal acrobatics to defend what he is doing. That almost always means a murky (if not outright incorrect) legal finding.