Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. A Supreme Court
Speaker 1: ruling on the Trump administration's plans to add a citizenship
Speaker 1: question to was expected in June, but now there may
Speaker 1: be something gumming up the courts well oil process, and
Speaker 1: it comes from files that surfaced after the death of
Speaker 1: a Republican redistricting consultant. Joining me is Bloomberg News Supreme
Speaker 1: Court reporter Greg's store. So Greg start by explaining what
Speaker 1: was found in the files of Thomas Huffeller and why
Speaker 1: it's significant June. What was found? What was a draft
Speaker 1: study that he performed that talked about how adding a
Speaker 1: citizenship question to the census would actually help Republicans and
Speaker 1: white voters because it would allow for districts to be
Speaker 1: drawn in a different way, such that um a district
Speaker 1: that might otherwise be say, heavily heavily Hispanic, heavily democratic,
Speaker 1: would have to take on more territory. I have to
Speaker 1: bring in more people and therefore, UM the voters in
Speaker 1: the in those districts would have a bit less clout
Speaker 1: UM and that those files seem to match up pretty
Speaker 1: well with UH some of the documents in the census case.
Speaker 1: And the allegation is that Mr Hoffeller's UH work actually
Speaker 1: fed into the census, the Commerce Department's decision to include
Speaker 1: the citizenship question on the census. So how would that
Speaker 1: enter into the Supreme courts discussions of the case before them.
Speaker 1: So one of the big issues at the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: is the Trump administration says the reason we're adding this
Speaker 1: question is because it will help us enforce the Voting
Speaker 1: Rights Act. In other words, it will make it easier
Speaker 1: for us to bring cases that say Hispanics are being
Speaker 1: discriminated against, because we'll have a better sense of, you know,
Speaker 1: of where there are citizens in the country. And UH
Speaker 1: there has the argument. The finding of a federal trial
Speaker 1: judge in the case was that that that rationale was
Speaker 1: a pretext. That wasn't the real reason that the administration
Speaker 1: is trying to add the question. Well, this evidence, if
Speaker 1: you believe it, UH, could show what the actual reason was,
Speaker 1: not that they were trying to help enforce the Voting
Speaker 1: Rights Act, but actually that they were trying to help
Speaker 1: elect more Republicans. Now, um, in the the evidence right now,
Speaker 1: this new evidence is just before Manhattan Judge Jesse Furman,
Speaker 1: who decided the government and couldn't add assist question question
Speaker 1: after a trial. What's happening right now? Yeah, So the
Speaker 1: procedurally this is is pretty much untried territory and certainly complicated.
Speaker 1: The case supposedly is all at the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 1: Judge Ferman shouldn't have anything to do. But uh, those
Speaker 1: challenging the question have uh filed a letter with Judge
Speaker 1: Furman saying, hey, look at all this new evidence and
Speaker 1: it it suggests in fact shows they say that some
Speaker 1: people on the government side were misleading in their testimony. Um.
Speaker 1: And so they are essentially trying to get Ferman to
Speaker 1: open up the case, reopen the case at least in
Speaker 1: some sense to uh impose sanctions on the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: And one possibility at least is that the sanctions would
Speaker 1: be you have to submit to officials, have to submit
Speaker 1: to a new deposition, and they may try to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, gather some more evidence and more findings from
Speaker 1: Judge Furman. To present to the Supreme Court before it
Speaker 1: makes its final decision. The Justice Department says that this
Speaker 1: had the claims are false and it played no role
Speaker 1: in the Department's request to put that citizenship question on
Speaker 1: the census. Now, the Supreme Court, as you know, usually
Speaker 1: bases its rulings on the evidence before the trial court,
Speaker 1: the arguments filed in the in the briefs in the case.
Speaker 1: Would the Justices even consider new evidence at this point?
Speaker 1: If not at all clear? I asked a number of
Speaker 1: Supreme Court lawyers yesterday if they knew of any real
Speaker 1: precedent for this, and there wasn't a really good parallel um.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to say, um, exactly what the Court
Speaker 1: would do. Now. One possibility, depending on how the Conservatives
Speaker 1: look at this case, is that they might say it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter to us regardless. One one argument that the
Speaker 1: administration has been making is, look, the Commerce Department has
Speaker 1: put forth a rationale that that makes sense, and you
Speaker 1: need to defer to that. Because the Commerce Department, which
Speaker 1: oversees the Census Bureau, has very broad discretion and deciding
Speaker 1: what questions go into the sensus. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: all this evidence really wouldn't matter to the five conservative
Speaker 1: justices on the Court in any event, Um, I would
Speaker 1: expect that that all this new information will at least
Speaker 1: in some way entering into the opinions in the case,
Speaker 1: if only in a dissenting opinion. So when we spoke
Speaker 1: last about the census question, after the oral arguments, you
Speaker 1: seem to feel that they were basically going to ignore
Speaker 1: the evidence about you know, Wilbur Ross and whether he
Speaker 1: who he talked to before and and rule on sort
Speaker 1: of the concept. Correct me if I'm wrong, because so
Speaker 1: that would mean that this new evidence really wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: to them exactly. That was That was what I was
Speaker 1: suggesting earlier, that that was at least the sense that
Speaker 1: that a lot of us got from the argument that
Speaker 1: that was where it seemed like the Conservative justices were.
Speaker 1: Now argument can be deceiving. I I don't think, you know,
Speaker 1: based on what we know about this case in the
Speaker 1: way the argument when that this is a slam dunk
Speaker 1: at this point from the outside, Um, there's certainly a
Speaker 1: possibility that Chief Justice Roberts is a lot more sympathetic
Speaker 1: to the challengers to the census question than he led
Speaker 1: on during the arguments. Uh, you know, at a minimum,
Speaker 1: one would imagine that the Chief Justice, who cares a
Speaker 1: lot about the Court's institutional standing, would be bothered by
Speaker 1: the image of this court both in in this case
Speaker 1: and potentially another pair of cases evolving partisan jurymandery, that
Speaker 1: he would really be bothered by the perception that this
Speaker 1: court is doing the bidding of the Republican Party. But
Speaker 1: there's at least the potential, depending on how those cases
Speaker 1: come out, that a lot of people are going to
Speaker 1: think that's what's happening. And Greg, you spoke to Rick Hasson,
Speaker 1: who's a voting rights expert at u C Irvine, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting he thought that these revelations could make the
Speaker 1: courts conservatives even more likely to back the administration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he had an interesting take. Um. So, there was a
Speaker 1: case a few years ago called Evanwell and had to
Speaker 1: do with, um, what how when when a state is
Speaker 1: drawing districts in this case, it was state legislative districts. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's trying to comply with the one person, one
Speaker 1: vote principle, whether it should be using the total population
Speaker 1: which is what states generally use, or citizen voting age
Speaker 1: population and in this case the Supreme Court said, Um,
Speaker 1: this is a fairly narrow ruling. It said, well, at
Speaker 1: least states are not required to use the citizen voting
Speaker 1: age population UM. But Justices Alito and Thomas in descent
Speaker 1: in that case UH said it suggested that they were
Speaker 1: strungly inclined to say that at a minimum, they should
Speaker 1: be allowed to use that measure, and that would be
Speaker 1: something that would likely help Republicans at the polls. And
Speaker 1: so Rick Casson's point is that to the extent that
Speaker 1: this new evidence suggests that the real reason was to
Speaker 1: help states UH draw districts using citizen voting age population
Speaker 1: rather than total population, it might be something that some
Speaker 1: of the more conservative justices are very sympathetic to. All Right,
Speaker 1: thanks so much, Greg. We'll learn more next week. That's
Speaker 1: Bloomberg New Supreme Court report of Greg Store. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and
Speaker 1: listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg. Yeah,