Well, it's not just that they'll publish the same data with minimal protection. Which IMO is pretty disastrous. The likely consequence is that the Census Bureau just won't publish data, because confidentiality can't be sufficiently protected w/o noise infusion. That's a lot of data products (and detailed info in those products) that Census Bureau just won't be able publish anymore. For example, I can't really see race and ethnicity data being published at granular geographies anymore--and that's required for redistricting and whatever is left of the voting rights act.
No disclosure avoidance was applied to the state-level population counts used for congressional apportionment (i.e. how house seats are divvied up). There are plenty of valid critiques of the 2020 Census disclosure avoidance systems, but the Rs who claim that DP was used to manipulate state population counts to give Democrats more seats either have no idea what they're talking about or are being malicious.
Also... the first census results typically come out in the same year, e.g. December 2020, not 2016? More detailed demographer data take a bit longer. COVID was really the cause for delayed releases.
There are glaring factual problems with the florida lawsuit and recent critiques of the 2020 Census DP usage. (See 1.) Whether they're not aware or intentionally malicious, critics who claim the constitutional issue say that DP was applied to state-level counts. But disclosure avoidance (such as DP noise) was never applied to state-level population counts used for congressional apportionment---which is the constitutional purpose. There is no constitutional argument here. Drawing districts using block-level data is a totally different issue (a statutory not constitutional one), and disclosure avoidance was applied to those statistics.