Census case heads back to court

A month after the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end the 2020 head count of every U.S. resident, the case that propelled the ruling was back in a district court Friday, with advocacy groups and the Trump administration heading toward a full trial early next year.

A coalition of local governments and advocacy groups that sued the Trump administration for trying to end the once-a-decade head count a month early was asking U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., to make the Census Bureau revert to a previous plan pushing back until next April the deadline for turning in numbers used for divvying up congressional seats.

The plaintiffs said that the Census Bureau’s rush to finish forced census takers to cut corners, leading to an undercount of Black, Latino and Native American communities.

The coalition says the count was shortened to make sure the numbers-crunching takes place while President Donald Trump is still in office so that his administration can enforce his desire to exclude people in the country illegally from the numbers used for determining how many congressional seats each state gets for a decade to come. Three separate federal courts have ruled Trump’s order unlawful, but his administration is appealing.

The Trump administration has asked the judge to dismiss the coalition’s lawsuit or put it on hold, until either Trump reports the apportionment numbers to Congress or an appellate court rules on an earlier order by Koh.

Department of Justice attorneys on behalf of the Trump administration said the court shouldn’t get involved with dayto-day census operations that could interfere with the Census Bureau’s efforts to meet the congressionally mandated Dec. 31 deadline. They also said any claims of harm are premature.

Koh said Friday that she would allow both sides to start gathering evidence with a trial set for early next year.