Attorney: Congressional seat data won’t be ready until mid-February

A Trump administration attorney said Monday that the numbers used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets won’t be ready until mid-February at the earliest, putting in jeopardy an effort by President Donald Trump to exclude people in the country illegally from those figures.

The U.S. Census Bureau has found new irregularities in the head count data that determines congressional seat allocations and the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year, John Coghlan, a deputy assistant

Attorney General, said during a court hearing.

Not having the apportionment numbers finished before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20 will jeopardize an effort by President Donald Trump to exclude people in the country illegally from the apportionment count since the numbers will be delivered under the supervision of a Biden administration.

The numbers could be pushed back even later in February from the expected Feb. 9 date, Coghlan said.

Under federal law, the Census Bureau is required to turn in the numbers used for allocating congressional seats by Dec. 31, but the bureau announced last week that the numbers wouldn’t be ready. At the time, the Census Bureau said it would finish the apportionment numbers in early January, as close to the end-of-year deadline as possible.

The new February date was made public during a hearing for a federal lawsuit in San Jose, California.

The lawsuit was originally brought by a coalition of municipalities and advocacy groups to stop the census from ending early as a shortened count might underreport minority communities.