In a win for good government, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to give its full imprimatur to the Trump administration’s irresponsible decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form. The nuanced ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, noted that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s decision to add the citizenship question “was reasonabl e and reasonably explained,” despite the Census Bureau’s misgivings about the move. As recently as last week, bureau experts warned that adding the question would result in a significant undercount of households with at least one noncitizen member. Later in the ruling, however, the chief justice wrote that the voting rights rationale offered by Mr. Ross depended on an “incongruent” explanation that wasn’t supported by proper evidence. “It is rare to review a record as extensive as the one before us when evaluating informal agency action — and it should be,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

Source: New York Times June 27, 2019 16:21 UTC