A U.S. District Judge in the Northern District of California has issued a preliminary injunction that enjoins the U.S. Census Bureau from ending its counting operations on September 30. The order explains that the coalition of plaintiffs – headed by the National Urban League – are likely to succeed in the lawsuit and that shortening the timeframes for data collection and processing by half, necessitate the preliminary injunction. The administration is expected to appeal. Read the order here.
While the Census Bureau had originally requested Congress to extend the statutory deadlines for apportionment data delivery to the President and redistricting data delivery to the states, the Dept. of Commerce – presumably at the direction of the White House, pivoted and withdrew that request. With the original deadlines in place, officials at census responded with a shortened timeframe for each of its phases in order to meet original deadlines.
According to the court; “the result was that the time for the 2020 Census was reduced from 71.5 weeks to 49.5 weeks. Specifically, self-response compressed from 33.5 weeks to 29 weeks, with the deadline advancing from October 31 to September 30. The time for non-response follow-up activities was compressed from 11.5 weeks to 7.5 weeks, with the deadline advancing from October 31 to September 30. Lastly, data processing was halved from 26 weeks to 13 weeks, with the deadline advancing from April 30, 2021 to December 31, 2020. As of August 3, 2020, less than 63% of households had responded to the 2020 Census.”
