For the first time since 2005, the Supreme Court has granted certiorari before judgement, in the census citizenship question case. In this case, the Second Circuit is being bypassed. Approaching printing deadlines forced this rare move. A decision is expected in June.
I am on my phone, so will provide links when I get home.
interesting… bypassing the decision they might have had to overturn to get a truer picture on the census…
I wonder if this precedent will carry over to the national emergency spending as well?
Here they were facing a firm deadline, i.e. the deadline for printing the census forms. The whole wall thing will simply be enjoined by a district court and the Supreme Court will handle it in regular order.
Docket for 18-966 (Supreme Court docket #18-966)
Issues : (1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; and (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker – including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials – without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis.
Adding Scotusblog and Supreme Court docket links and the questions before the court.
