here is the thing, time is running out. the 2020 census forms have to be printed in just a few weeks. let s bring in nbc s pete williams outside the supreme court. he has been covering the supreme court for nbc news. are you ready for it? for 26 years. that means but who is counting. he knows what he s talking about. also joining us maya wiley senior vice president for social justice at the new school. pete, bra he can this down for us. the court s decision, it s not that you can t ask the question, it s the way the administration handled it? reporter: precisely. the court said, for example, that it would not violate the constitution s command that you have to enumerate the population if you added this question. that was one of the arguments that the challengers made, that this would so skew the process that you would never get an accurate count. the supreme court rejected that argument. so i think you all have framed it precisely. what happens now is the supreme court said the
a request that major. are there any consequences for secretary ross? well, yeah, right now the census the census bureau can t put that question on the census form. that s a pretty big slap-down to him saying you weren t honest with us with the supreme court. now, as you pointed out, the government has been insistent that it had to have a decision by the end of this month in order to start the process to prepare the forms. is it now going to decide there s actually more play in the joints? if it speeds the process up and does it later in the year would it have to go back to congress and get more money? all of which is to say i really can t make a prediction about whether this question will be on the census form or not. there are some legal experts including tom goldstein who we had on earlier today who said he thinks they probably could get it on but there is no unanimity on that. this is not the end of the game but certainly a big setback for the trump administration s efforts to d
that s not an adequate explanation. namely, the explanation by the commerce secretary, wilbur ross, that he decided to add this question only after he got a letter from the justice department saying we need this data to better enforce the voting rights act. the supreme court basically said that s not true. he was thinking about this way before that. so what they ve done is they ve sent it back to the court where this came from. according to york they ruled in favor of 18 states and other groups that challenged this decision to put the citizenship question on and that court had sent it back to the census bureau to say try again. tell us now why you really want this question. so that s where it stands. the census bureau can come back now, they will go to the judge in new york, he will probably rule against them, the trump administration will ask the supreme court to take the case and the question is by the time all that has played out, has it simply been too late to get this process goin
today that is potentially another obstacle to the census bureau getting this question on the form. so i don t know how that s going to play out, either, but that is very much a lurking problem for the administration. pete, dig into this for us, this other decision that came on partisan gerrymandering. explain it all. reporter: sure. so this is the question, it was from two states, one in which the republicans in north carolina did everything they could to minimize the number of seats in congress, the democrats could get, and just the opposite in maryland where the democrats were trying to limit republicans in congress from their state. in both states the claim was that the state legislatures engaged were so partisan, was engaged in such blatant partisan gerrymandering that it crossed a constitutional line. today the supreme court said in two separate rulings that s not a question we can answer because we don t know where that constitutional line is. gerrymandering, drawing these
coming up next, 2020 contenders john delaney and eric swalwell are up with velshi and ruhle. that felt like it was a very full hour you had there, a lot of big discussiones. take a deep breath. wrapping up last night, moving toward today and dealing with all of the supreme court decisions that are out today. have a great rest of it. you bet. we will see you later this afternoon into take a deep breath and a disco nap. welcome to velshi and ruhle. a major set back for the trump administration, the supreme court ruling that andrea was talking about and a complicated decision. td administration cannot add a citizenship question to the 2020 census at least for now. this is a 5-4 opinion written by the chief justice john roberts that says while the government has the right to ask the question, its explanation for doing so on the 2020 census was inadequate. the ruling does leave open the possibility that the administration could come back with a better explanation, but