Two of Chief Justice John Roberts’ top priorities are on a collision course as the Supreme Court nears a pivotal decision this week on the Trump administration’s design for the 2020 census.
Roberts has repeatedly declared that he wants the public to see the court as a nonpartisan institution, even though polarizing cases have often divided it between the five justices appointed by Republican presidents and the four appointed by Democrats.
Roberts over the years has shown he’s uneasy with decisions on big cases that routinely align the court, in effect, along those party lines — an instinct that was most notably evident when he joined with the court’s four Democratic-appointed justices to mostly preserve the Affordable Care Act in 2012. “We do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle, we do not caucus in separate rooms, we do not serve one party or one interest, we serve one nation,” Roberts insisted in a speech last October.
But on cases affecting the core electoral interests of the two parties — like the decision impending this week on whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 census — Roberts has conspicuously deviated from that pattern. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, CNN