Supreme Court Allows Trial on Census Citizenship Question to Go Forward

“There’s nothing unusual about a new cabinet secretary coming to office inclined to favor a different policy direction, soliciting support from other agencies to bolster his views, disagreeing with staff or cutting through red tape,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. “Of course, some people may disagree with the policy and process. But until now, at least, this much has never been thought enough to justify a claim of bad faith and launch an inquisition into a cabinet secretary’s motives.”

On Oct. 26, Judge Jesse M. Furman ruled that the trial should proceed.

“Defendants provide no basis to deviate from the well-established and well-justified procedures that have generally been applied in federal courts for generations — whereby district courts decide cases in the first instance, followed by an appeal by the losing party, on a full record, to the court of appeals and, thereafter, a petition to the Supreme Court,” Judge Furman wrote.

“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. He initially said that he had acted in response to a December 2017 request from the Justice Department and that he had not consulted with the White House.

Later, Mr. Ross acknowledged that he had been exploring the idea long before receiving a letter from the Justice Department and that he had discussed the issue with Stephen K. Bannon, then President Trump’s chief strategist, in spring 2017.