The Supreme Court on Thursday in a vote of 5-4 (June 27, 2019) rejected the Trump administration’s stated reason for adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 census.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the explanation offered by the Trump administration for adding the question “appears to have been contrived.”
Executive branch officials must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public,” the chief justice wrote.
“Accepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of the enterprise. If judicial review is to be more than an empty ritual, it must demand something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in this case.
