On September 24, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California issued a Preliminary Injunction prohibiting the Trump administration from further implementing the “rushed census plan” that had forced the Census Bureau to finish data collection by September 30 and to recommit to processing, tabulating, and reporting state population totals used for congressional apportionment by the current statutory deadline of December 31, 2020. The full opinion is posted at this link.
The Census Bureau is expected to issue a statement about how it will proceed operationally. Unless and until a Stay of the judge’s Order is granted, counting operations will continue through October and any plans to rush the delivery of apportionment data by December 31 are on hold. The federal government is appealing this Order to the Ninth Circuit, continuing the uncertainty surrounding completion of the 2020 Census. Judge Koh late today denied the Trump DOJ request to Stay her order so the case now proceeds to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
Census stakeholders continue to urge Congress to act by approving language that would extend the 2020 Census statutory reporting deadlines. They are also urging members in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate to support bipartisan legislation, 2020 Census Deadline Extensions Act (the Schatz/Murkowski/Sullivan bill, S. 4571, and the Young/Gallego bill, H.R. 8250) that would also extend data collection activities and the statutory reporting deadlines. For interested organizations, The Census Project has posted talking points that explain the issues and provide additional information about the 2020 Census Deadline Extension Act.
The Census Project 
One thought on “Preliminary Injunction Allows Extension of 2020 Census Data Collection”
Comments are closed.