The US Supreme Court released a per curiam opinion in Trump v. New York Friday, dismissing the case for a lack of jurisdiction and finding the issue to not be suitable for adjudication at this time. The decision is the culmination of several months of litigation originating from President Trump’s July Presidential Memorandum, which ordered the Secretary of Commerce to prepare Census data that excluded aliens not in lawful immigration status from the official Census apportionment base. This decision allows the government to defer to the Presidential Memorandum but leaves the door open to future legal challenges.

Challenges to the President’s July memo were immediately brought by states, local governments, and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, claiming that the policy change would discourage aliens and their families from truthfully responding to the Census in order to avoid answering questions about their status, which in turn could degrade the quality of census data used to allocate federal funds. The federal District Court in the Southern District of New York originally ruled for these plaintiffs and found the Presidential Memorandum to be in violation of statues governing the Census, as the statutory language does not allow for a second set of numbers that exclude “persons” living in a state. The present case resulted from a government appeal of that decision.

Citing precedent expanding upon the appropriateness of judicial review under Article III of the Constitution, Friday’s unsigned opinion did not find that an “actual controversy” existed throughout all stages of the litigation, and that any possible unlawful or detrimental effects to the Census were purely speculative at this point. Due to the speculative nature of any future effects, the Court felt that judicial resolution of the dispute would be premature, and a ruling on the issue would be inappropriate at this time.

Justice Breyer dissented, with Justices Sotomayor and Kagan joining, asserting that the question was ripe for adjudication, and further noting that they would have likely found the government’s efforts to remove aliens without lawful status from the apportionment base to be unlawful. Friday’s dismissal means that the District Court’s decision against the Presidential Memorandum has now been overruled, but further legal challenges are likely to emerge should the new apportionment policy actually be implemented.