The Supreme Court has granted an emergency stay allowing Trump's Commerce Department, headed by Wilbur Ross, to end the 2020 census count early. This will, with certainty, lead to an undercount of the United States population. It may also impact the reapportionment of congressional seats. A lower court decision had required the Census Bureau to continue the count until Oct. 31.
In a dissent, Justice Sotomayor noted that the Census Bureau itself had previously selected the Oct. 31 date as necessary to maintain census accuracy despite pandemic disruptions, and that the government has already asserted that it will not be able to meet the Dec. 31 statutory deadline for reporting the results whether the count was continued through October or was halted.
"Moreover, meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying, especially when the Government has failed to show why it could not bear the lesser cost of expending more resources to meet the deadline or continuing its prior efforts to seek an extension from Congress. This Court normally does not grant extraordinary relief on such a painfully disproportionate balance of harms."
The stay will have gigantic and irreparable effects on United States governance, but the Supreme Court majority gave no explanation—literally none—for its emergency intervention.