Trump Administration Slams Push to Reopen Census Case

and impending Supreme Court decision. That decision, of course, is whether the administration can add a citizenship question to the census, and it's expected before the end of June. Joining us as Bloomberg new Supreme Court reporter Greg's store. So, Greg, let's go back a little bit and explain what was found in the files of the Republican consultant, Thomas hoff Feller,

who died in August, right, uh June. Actually, let me step back even further and just explain one bit of context, which is one of the key issues before the Supreme Court, and that is why does the administration want to add this question to the census. The administration says its reason is that the Justice Department asked for help in enforcing the Voting Rights Act, which is generally designed to protect minority rights. Uh and and the opponents of the question say,

that's just a pretext, that's not your real reason. So in the files of this Republican consultant is what those opponents say is evidence that the real reason was actually to help Republicans and white voters at the polls. And what they found were a couple of things. One was a study that that Mr Hope Feller conducted back in UH that essentially said that adding the question a citizenship question to the census would indeed help Republicans and white

voters at the polls. And then they found some other evidence of a connection between him and a man named Mark Newman, who was an informal advisor to Commerce Secretary Ross. And the suggestion from the opponents is that uh Dr Hoefeller uh funneled information through Mr Newman and eventually influenced the way this This Justice Department letter to the Commerce Department read. So, now the Trump administration writes a letter to federal Judge Jesse Furman, who heard the case already

and this is before him. What did the Trump administration say besides denying that this was true. Yeah, they say, I gave you a few, uh, you know, pieces of information there a second ago. And they basically say, you can't connect those dots in the way that the they plaint us are are trying to do it. Uh. They say, there's no evidence that the Acting Assistant Attorney General John Gore, who wrote that letter to the Commerce Department, that he

ever knew anything about the study by dot to whole Feller. Um. And there's no evidence that the actual letter he put together, uh to send to the Commerce Department was in any way drawn on the work that Dr hoe Feller had done. Uh. There were some similarities in language between some files on the whole Feller computer and um a draft letter that Mr Newman had sent to Acting Assistant Attorney General Gore.

But the Justice Department, the Trump administration is now saying, uh, that language never made it into the final language, and you're you're having to speculate to try to connect those dots. The real question every time we get information on this that that God insto the surfaces, what how will this fit into the Supreme Court's upcoming decision when it's information way after the fact. Yeah, it's really hard to know.

I can think of a good parallel where you have new information like this coming in and where one side says, hey, it proves that the other side was being dishonest this whole time. You know, normally the Supreme Court likes to you know, base its rulings on the evidence that was before the trial judge at the time the trial judge considered it. Uh. You know, the justices, based on their usual schedules, should have already a voted on it and be circulated a draft majority opinion. So it would be

quite striking for anything to to change their fundamentally. And then you have this whole issue that, uh, all this new evidence is being presented to the district judge, whom, at least on the surface, no longer has jurisdiction and doesn't clearly have anything to do with this evidence. If it had come up before him, uh a year ago, that would have been one thing, It could have been a part of his ruling. But now it's after the fact, and so it's not at all clear that this will

make any difference at the Supreme Court. And one wonders even if the Court had it before it. I mean, we we've talked several times about there being other evidence of what Secretary Ross's real goal was in putting this question on the census, and the Justices, at least the Conservative Justices don't seem to consider that paramount and their decision. Yeah, at least based on the argument. Nothing in the argument suggested the Conservative Justices were bothered by any of this

sort of thing. Uh. They you know that there's a statute that that gives the Commerce Department very broad discretion over formulated formulating the census and deciding what questions to put on there. The Commerce Department did put forth a rationale for why it did it, and that may be enough for the Conservative Justices. It may not matter that there were uh, that there's some evidence of hidden motives.

All this may simply be atmospherics as far as they're concerned. So, Greg, is there anything about this before the Supreme Court right now? Not in any formal way. Both sides have filed something at the Supreme Court saying, hey, look what we just filed at the at the district court. And so the Justices are certainly aware that this is going on. But as a formal matter, there is nothing in front of them.

I would be surprised if we didn't see some mention of it in somebody's opinion, no matter how the case comes out. But it's at least at the moment, there's nothing that the Court has to do uh with any of this evidence. So now we are in the month of June, which is your busiest time at the Supreme Court, because the decisions for the term are coming out this month. What are you looking for and uh, when do you

think they'll the big ones will be coming out? Well, the big ones so often come out at the very end of June. That wouldn't surprise me if that is the case with the census case, certainly. Uh. The other really big case we're watching for it's actually two cases involving partisan jerrymandering. The Court um had considered the the issue last term and sort of kick the can down

the road. It's possible now the conservative justices will say definitively, you cannot challenge a jerrymander voting map as being so partisan that it violates the Constitution. Uh, that would be a huge decision. It's also at least on the table that the Court could at least allow some challenges to to partisan jerrymandering. UM. We're also gonna be looking a lot at what cases the Court takes up for next term.

So there are issues involving abortion that are there. There's another case involving a bakery that wouldn't make a cake for a same sex wedding. UH. At some point in the next few weeks, I expect to see the Court act on President Trump's effort to kill the DOCCA program, that deferred deportation program started under President Obama. UM. And all these issues could crop up next year in the middle of the presidential election campaign. It's going to be

very busy, and yet another wedding cake case. It's it's amazing, all right, Greg, thank you so much as ow eight. That's Bloomberg News Supreme foot Recorder. Greg Store, Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple podcast, SoundCloud and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg