U.S. Supreme Court blocks Trump’s census citizenship …

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON, June 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a significant defeat on Thursday, ruling that his administration did not give an adequate explanation for its plan to include a contentious citizenship question on the 2020 census and preventing its addition to the decennial survey for now.

The justices – in a 5-4 decision with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the court’s four liberals in the majority and writing the ruling – upheld part of a federal judge’s ruling barring the question in a victory for a group of states including New York and immigrant rights organizations that had challenged the plan.

Opponents of the question have called it a Republican ploy to scare immigrants into not taking part in the population count.”