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Hansi Loewong National Correspondent at NPR on the precipice of the Supreme Court's last day

before summer vacation. We got two big rulings for how we count people and structure maps.

Let's talk about the people. The Supreme Court finally issued a ruling in the census citizenship

question this morning. What happened? A majority of the Supreme Court ruled that for now,

they're going to leave the citizenship question blocked from being added to the 2020 census forms.

And what was their reasoning? Well, the majority opinion, this is written by Chief

Justice John Roberts. He wrote that essentially the Trump administration's reasoning for

wanting to add the question, is this person a citizen of the United States to the 2020 census forms?

That reasoning, which was to better protect the voting rights, racial and language minorities,

that reasoning the court found was, quote, contrived. And the majority said that it, quote,

cannot ignore the disconnect between the decision made and the explanation given for the question

by the Trump administration. So it's not an all-out rejection of the citizenship question.

No, the majority of the courts ruled it is essentially still within the authority of the

Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, to add this question. But the reasoning

to better enforced the Voting Rights Act, that reasoning they are skeptical of,

you know, another interesting word that was used was this was a distraction. Chief Justice John

Roberts wrote, so it leaves the door open for a better reason then? Right, technically what the

Supreme Court did today was send this issue essentially back in the Commerce Department's court.

And they can explain what is a reasoning for this that would maybe pass mustard with the

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