JUDGES ALLOW CENSUS TO CONTINUE THROUGH MONTH
Panel rejects waiving year-end deadline for turning in figures
A panel of three appellate judges on Wednesday upheld a lower court order allowing the 2020 head count of every U.S. resident to continue through October. But the panel struck down a provision that had suspended a year-end deadline for turning in figures used to decide how many congressional seats each state gets.
The ruling by the three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld part of U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s preliminary injunction last month, and rejected part of it.
Koh’s preliminary injunction suspended a Sept. 30 deadline for finishing the 2020 census and also a Dec. 31 deadline for submitting numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets in a process known as apportionment. Because of those actions, the deadlines reverted back to a previous Census Bureau plan that had field operations ending Oct. 31 and the reporting of apportionment figures at the end of April.
By issuing the injunction, Koh sided with a coalition of civil rights groups and local governments which had sued the Trump administration, arguing that minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the counting ended in September instead of October.
But Trump administration attorneys had argued that the Census Bureau was
obligated to meet the congressionally mandated requirement to turn in apportionment numbers by Dec. 31.
Neither the Justice Department, which litigated the case on behalf of the federal government, nor the Census Bureau responded immediately to an email inquiry. A Department of Justice attorney suggested Monday during arguments before the appellate court panel that they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In response to the pandemic, the Census Bureau in April proposed extending the deadline for finishing the count from the end of July to the end of October and pushing the apportionment deadline from Dec. 31 to next April.
The proposal to extend the apportionment deadline passed the Democratic-controlled House, but the Republican-controlled Senate didn’t take up the request. Then, in late July or early August, bureau officials shortened the count schedule by a month so that it would finish at the end of September.
The Republicans’ inac
tion coincided with a memorandum President Donald Trump issued, which was later ruled unlawful by a panel of three district judges in New York, directing the Census Bureau to exclude from the apportionment count people in the country illegally. The Trump administration is appealing that case to the Supreme Court.
By sticking to the Dec. 31 deadline, the apportionment count would be under the control of the Trump administration no matter who wins the presidential election next month.
While allowing the head count to continue through October leaves less time to crunch the numbers before the Dec. 31 deadline, Trump administration officials and outside groups had said that the Census Bureau would be unable to meet that deadline “under any conditions,” the appellate judges said.
The appellate judges also noted that just because the Dec. 31 deadline can’t be met practically doesn’t mean the court should require the Census Bureau to miss it.