The Supreme Court has declined to issue a final ruling on the legality of President Donald Trump's plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted in population allotments for state seats in the House of Representatives.

The Supreme Court also said the lawsuit on congressional apportionments was "premature," as reported by the Independent. 

The plan to exclude undocumented immigrants was criticized by civil rights groups and immigrant rights organizations. The court's decision on Friday is not a final ruling on the matter.

However, it lets the Trump administration to follow the plan for now, despite it remains unclear as to whether the White House will receive final numbers from the Census Bureau before Trump leaves the office next month.

Trump's plan will effectively die if the president has not received final census numbers by the time President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.

It is also possible that the Biden administration would take steps to try reversing the decisions made by Trump.

"Career officials at the Census Bureau still don't know even roughly how many illegal aliens it'll be able to identify, let alone how their number and geographic concentration might affect apportionment," Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall said in an NPR report.

Wall issued this statement during an oral argument just 18 days ago.

Related story: Trump Signs Memorandum Excluding Undocumented Immigrants From Census

The court concluded that the case was not yet ripe for a resolution because none of the 23 states or immigrants' groups that brought it had yet been injured.

Chief Justice John Roberts said that right now, they do not have any idea what the president is going to do, adding that they do not know how many undocumented immigrants would be excluded.

Roberts said that they would wait until they have better information. 

Disagreements

The court's three liberal justices disagreed. These judges are Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Breyer noted that Trump's memorandum in July explicitly stated his purpose, which is to take away congressional seats from mainly Democratic states that are now home states to several undocumented immigrants.

Breyer added that the harm is evident on the face of the policy.

Justice Department spokesperson Mollie Timmons said that they are pleased that the ruling clears the way for Commerce Department to continue its work on the census and send the full data to Trump.

Immigrants rights advocates are cautioning that they would sue again if the administration intends to impose the said policy.

Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project, said that they will file a case and will win it. This was supported by New York State Attorney General Letitia James.

James said that they would continue to do whatever is needed to stop Trump from putting politics above the law.

News organizations have reported that Census Bureau officials have implied that they are not likely to meet the Dec. 31 deadline for submitting their report to the president due to the ongoing pandemic. 

Related story: Will Undocumented Immigrants Survive Amid the COVID-19 Lock Down?