On Thursday, the federal district court overseeing litigation challenging the U.S. Census Bureau’s handling of 2020 Census data collection and post-processing, issued an order to dismiss the case with detailed stipulations for all parties involved. The lead plaintiff, The National Urban League and various other entities In National Urban League v. Raimondo have agreed to cease litigation in return for regular and robust assurances that 2020 Census data will be processed carefully and accurately. Below is a summary of the stipulations and selected quotes from the court’s order.
” . . .the parties agree that rather than continuing to dispute whether a violation of the Enumeration Clause or Census Act has occurred with respect to Defendants’ truncated data collections/field operations period, the parties will instead proceed in the following manner:”
Apportionment Data Reporting: The bureau will not report results of the 2020 Census to the Secretary of Commerce, the President, and Congress, before Monday, April 26, 2021.
Data Quality Review Metrics: The Census Bureau will continue to carry out data-quality review for states, territories, and sub-state areas (counties, census tracts etc) that include: 1) self-response rates down to the census tract level; 2) state total completion rates; and 3) nonresponse follow-up (NRFU) workload completion rates for the area census offices.
At or around the release of the apportionment data, the Census Bureau will produce quality metrics and operational metrics for the states and territories as detailed in exhibit 1 attached to the order.
Report Operational Quality Metrics: Around May 2021, the Census Bureau will release additional information for the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, including operational quality metrics identified in Exhibit 2.
Around the date when the Census Bureau releases redistricting products, the bureau will provide summary-level information for sub-state levels, including county and census tract levels (for example, “XX% of tracts had proxy rates greater than 50%”).
Conduct Internal Data Quality Review: The Census Bureau will continue to conduct its own internal subject matter expert reviews as well as having external experts, like the American Statistical Association, conduct reviews of the processing files for the 2020 Census for both the apportionment numbers and the redistricting data.
Allow External Data Quality Review: The Census Bureau will also continue all activities necessary for the Data Quality Executive Guidance Group to review 2020 Census results for accuracy prior to publication. These reviews will include reviewing and assessing issues identified in Plaintiff’s Complaint, including the use of administrative records, proxies, and population count only enumerations.
Conduct Video Briefings: The Census Bureau agrees to hold video briefings for Plaintiffs every two months to allow an opportunity for questions and answers regarding the status of forthcoming data-quality metrics and assessment of released data quality metrics, with one final briefing occurring after the release of the final results from the Post-Enumeration Survey.
Per the court order, the district court will retain jurisdiction over the matter should there be any alleged violation of the terms or if additional plaintiffs file similar claims against the bureau, in which case they must “meet and confer” with the bureau to resolve the issue. The order does allow plaintiffs to file legal challenges to the soon-to-be-released 2020 census data without the need to satisfy the initial conference requirement. After June 1, 2022, at the latest, the plaintiff’s in this case waive the right to litigate any claims regarding the bureau’s collection and processing of the 2020 census data.
