Appellate judges let 2020 census continue through October
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 Ninth 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-tocount 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.
Supporters of the longer head count schedule praised the decision.
“The courts keep speaking even if the Trump administration is not listening,” said Julie Menin, who heads New York City’s census outreach efforts. “The Trump administration has lost time and time again in their attempts to interfere with the 2020 Census, and we welcome the Ninth Circuit’s decision, which preserves a fair and accurate census timeline.”
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 Democraticcontrolled House, but the Republic a n- c ont rol le d 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.