Unintended consequences...

One of the difficulties of being a Justice who first makes up their mind about how they want to rule, then comes back later and figures out how to justify it is that oftentimes there are unintended consequences to those rulings.

Let's take the ruling on the census for example. Using the Administrative Procedures Act to make the determination that you did not like someone's explanation or their motives for something, provides a striking blow to the entire administrative state. In other words, it could effectively lead to the whole "deep state" being second guessed on everything.

When it comes to landmark cases like the Chevron ruling (which the court provided a ton of deference to Government agencies to interpret Congressional direction) the situation was reversed. Democrats loved the idea that the "agencies" could work more independently, while conservatives were aghast that "agencies" were allowed to sort of take the law into their own hands and work almost independent of oversight.

But this runs counter to that particular ruling, and to some degree those you might think would like to continue to see deference to the deep state (liberals) and those you might think would like to reign them in (conservatives) were actually flipped in this case. Obviously, this decision was not based on any sort of ideological idea of deference or independence of Government agencies. Had this happened when Obama was President, the decision would likely have been 9-0, 8-1, or 7-2 in favor of providing the deference. That being said, there never would have been a court case because nobody would have been angry enough to go to court.

The only reason it went the other direction is because of Trump. The problem is that Trump will not always be President, but this decision will always be precedent. So sometime in the future, there will be a brash District Judge from the 8th circuit court who provides an injunction against an agency working under a Democratic rule, and that decision will then be confirmed by the 8th circuit court of appeals, and it will then make it's way to the USSC. One can probably imagine how much Sotomayor and Kagan may regret their Census ruling, seeing how it would almost require them to confirm the lower court decisions based on their own precedent.