TPM:

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to delay a trial scheduled to start next week in New York over its move to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census.

The request comes after the Supreme Court earlier this month temporarily halted plans to depose Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, while letting a deposition of a top Justice Department official, as well as additional discovery in the case, go forward.

The Justice Department is now asking the Supreme Curt to delay the trial so it can “resolve the question whether the district court must confine its review of the Secretary’s to the administrative record.”

In addition to the request for the trial delay, the Justice Department filed its petition that it consider whether a  “a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker.”

That petition argues that the challengers in the case had failed to show that Ross acted in bad faith in adding the question, referencing the “narrow exception” the Supreme Court has recognized “to the general rule prohibiting discovery beyond the administrative record.”