The Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to a proposed Trump Administration policy to exclude undocumented immigrants from official Census counts used to determine representation in the House of Representatives and allocation of federal funds, CNN reports.
In a 6-3 ruling, with the conservatives voting as a bloc, ruled that the plaintiffs–a coalition of states and immigrants’ rights groups–could not yet prove they incurred an injury by Trump’s policy because Trump has not yet defined the policy nor implemented it.
The judgement simply puts off inevitable Court challenges to Trump’s proposal until after he defines the rule and attempts to implement it. It made no ruling on the legality of changing the way the Census counted the numbers of people in the nation.
The US Census Bureau would typically have data from the count available by December 31st, however in 2020, the Trump administration delayed by three months initiating “door-knocking” efforts to complete the survey of American households. That delay, the Census Bureau has stated, likely will delay the presentation of the final numbers until Trump is out of office.