“Defendants may yet have their day to argue the merits in the Supreme Court,” he wrote. “But for many salutary reasons, that day should not come before this court has decided the merits in the first instance.”An appeals court also refused to halt the trial, and the Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court on Monday. Relying on Justice Gorsuch’s partial dissent, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco urged the justices to stop the trial while the Supreme Court considered the government’s petition. “Without a stay,” Mr. Francisco wrote, “there will be a full trial before the district court into the subjective motives of a sitting cabinet secretary, including whether the secretary harbored secret racial animus in reinstating a citizenship question to the decennial census. The harms to the government from such a proceeding are self-evident.”The advocacy groups said that Mr. Ross’s motives were a key element of the case.

Source: New York Times November 02, 2018 23:15 UTC