When the Supreme Court ruled against adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the court did not rule on the constitutionality of the question itself, only that the Department of Commerce and secretary Wilbur Ross did not follow proper procedure when adding the question.
By ruling on a technicality, the court left the Trump regime with a slim window of opportunity to follow proper procedure and add the question to the census, but the regime has now officially canceled plans to add the question.
From Politico:
In a statement about the administration's decision to publish the questionnaire without the citizenship question, Ross said, “I respect the Supreme Court but strongly disagree with its ruling regarding my decision to reinstate a citizenship question on the 2020 Census. ... My focus, and that of the bureau and the entire department, is to conduct a complete and accurate census.”
The Justice Department said during litigation that the Census Bureau faced a June 30 deadline to finalize printed questionnaires.
In short, conducting the 2020 census will require printing literally a billion documents and the federal government must begin the printing process now if they're going to begin the census in January of the new year.
I have no doubt that the Trump regime would have made another attempt -- possibly even a successful attempt -- to add a citizenship question to the next census if they had more time to do so.
The Commerce Department's own analysts estimated that adding the question could wipe millions of people off the census and deprive certain states and congressional districts of federal funds and other resources, but that's a feature, not a bug.
The Commerce Department initially argued that adding a citizenship question was necessary to properly enforce the Voting Rights Act, but that rationale did not pass the laugh test. Subsequent discoveries revealed that the true purpose of adding the question was to reduce the electoral power of Democratic districts and disenfranchise as many voters as possible. But we already knew that.
More often than not, the Trump regime's attempts to alter federal regulations and other procedures have failed because of their own incompetence and inability to follow proper procedure, not because their intent was necessarily illegal or unconstitutional. We'd be truly screwed if they had any idea what they're doing.