Fox’s Judge Napolitano Calls SCOTUS Decison on Census a ‘Significant Defeat’ for Trump Administration

Judge Andrew Napolitano told Fox News that the Supreme Court blocking the Trump administration’s effort to but a citizenship question on the 2020 census is a “significant defeat” that will make the president unhappy.

President Trump may not like it, but as Napolitano explained, because new evidence about the administration’s motive in adding the question came to light after the circuit court had already ruled on the case, it was only appropriate for that court to get the opportunity to reevaluate its own decision based on that evidence:

“When new evidence is discovered after the trial court has ruled, after the appellate court has ruled, and when that case is pending in the Supreme Court, they are not in the business of evaluating new evidence, so they follow standard operating procedure…[T]he Supreme Court did the right thing by sending this back to trial court to scrutinize the significance of this newly found evidence and then come up with final rulings.”

As law professor Richard Hasen noted earlier this week, the Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to do the unprecedented by ruling on the case without being fully briefed or hearing oral arguments because of a July 1 deadline to print census forms. SCOTUS apparently decided it could not do so without the new evidence–documents from the hard drive of a deceased Republican operative that appear to show racist intent behind the addition of the question–being evaluated and ruled on by lower courts.

In sending the case back down, John Roberts essentially told the administration to find a better pretext for adding the question. By which he meant one where the racism is not so obvious.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.