Count to end despite order

ORLANDO, Fla. — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross says the 2020 census will end Oct. 5, despite a San Jose federal judge’s ruling last week allowing the head count of every U.S. resident to continue through the end of October, according to a tweet posted by the Census Bureau on Monday.

The tweet said the ability for people to selfrespond to the census questionnaire and the doorknocking phase when census takers go to homes that haven’t yet responded is ending Oct. 5.

The announcement came as a hearing was being held in San Jose as a followup to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s preliminary injunction. The injunction ordered last week suspended the Census Bureau’s deadline for ending the head count on Sept. 30, which automatically reverted the deadline back to an older Census Bureau plan in which the deadline for ending field operations was Oct. 31.

The new Oct. 5 deadline doesn’t necessarily violate the judge’s order because the injunction just suspended the Sept. 30 deadline for field operations and a Dec. 31 deadline the Census Bureau has for turning in figures used for determining how many congressional seats each state gets.

Koh said in her ruling last Thursday that the shortened schedule ordered by President Trump’s administration likely would produce inaccurate results.