Judge blocks bid to end census early

Keep counting!

A federal in California vacated an order from President Trump’s administration requiring the census conclude in five days, ruling the early deadline would result in an inaccurate tally. The census now can continue through October.

“There’s no doubt we need the time,” said Ingrid Devita, 59, an enumerator in the city going door to door for the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We need to be vigilant that everything is done to protect justice with the census. If this ruling stands, I’m all for it.”

The decision also blocked officials from delivering final census data to the White House on Dec. 31, rather than in April 2021 as originally planned. The move was widely perceived to be a tactic to keep the data in Trump’s control, even if he loses the November election to Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

The census is used to determine how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed each year and how many congressional seats each state receives.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose wrote that senior officials at the Census Bureau and the Commerce Department acknowledged the early deadline would undermine the constitutionally mandated count. Experts in both agencies said finishing the count by Sept. 30 would be extremely difficult during normal times — let alone in a pandemic.

“I did not know whether Mother Nature would allow us to meet the September 30 date,” Census Associate Director Albert Fontenot Jr. said in a deposition for the case, citing the pandemic, wildfires in the West and hurricanes slamming the South.

The Bureau’s explanation for why the census needed to end early did not go beyond a two-page press release, the judge noted.

The decision is another court defeat for Trump regarding the census. The Supreme Court rejected his effort to add a citizenship question to the census. A three-judge panel also ruled Trump doesn’t have the authority to exclude undocumented immigrants from the count.