The words of this judge’s own ruling mention a “permanent injunction”...which means that another court has already ruled, and that he has no power to vacate that permanent injunction. This case dealt ONLY with one particular plaintiff and his/her case, and the judge was basically ruling this way on procedural grounds (i.e. you can’t demonstrate any harm BECAUSE of the permanent injunction in effect already). I don’t remember if the permanent injunction was placed by another District Court, or by a Circuit, but this is assuredly headed to the Supremes.
I would LOVE to see the other side appeal a Circuit decision in our favor, and have the Supremes decide not to take that case; alternatively, the Supremes can rule that by definition you cannot have harm by counting citizens, as that is one of the purposes of the census, with another being to aid in the determination of whether there is vote fraud by non-citizens if (for example) 1,000,000 votes are cast in a state which showed 800,000 citizens only 2 years earlier. Further, this question was asked in MANY prior censuses (censii?), I have seen it with my own eyes while researching my family tree.
The first question will be Cochise Consultancy v. US. Oral arguments Feb 19. USSC