Trump admin. lawyers: Census target could be met if not for order extending count
Source: Associated Press
Census: Target could be met if not for order extending count
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
October 5, 2020
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The U.S. Census Bureau could meet a year-end deadline for turning in numbers used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets, if it wasn’t for a federal judge’s order extending the 2020 census for another month, Trump administration attorneys told appellate judges in court documents.
A three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is hearing arguments Monday on the administration’s efforts to overturn U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s preliminary injunction.
Koh’s injunction last month suspended a Sept. 30 deadline for ending the head count as well as a Dec. 31 deadline for turning in the numbers used to determine how many congressional seats each state gets, in a process known as apportionment. Her order reverted the deadlines to those of a Census Bureau plan, announced in April in response to the pandemic, that would end field operations on Oct. 31 and report apportionment numbers at the end of April 2021.
The judge sided with civil rights groups and local governments that had sued the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce, arguing that minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the counting ended in September.
The Trump administration lawyers said judge’s decision ignores a congressionally-mandated deadline requiring the Census Bureau to turn in apportionment numbers by Dec. 31. They also said the local governments and civil rights groups failed to show that accuracy will be compromised if the 2020 census ends early enough for the data to be analyzed before the end of the year.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-archive-courts-census-2020-abf4fcf88086b836359e2fc9201ecab2