Judge Rules Census Can Continue For Another Month, Deadline Back On For Oct. 31
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- A federal judge has stopped the 2020 census from ending a month early, saying it would likely yield inaccurate results.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in California made her ruling late Thursday.
In a statement, New York City Census Director Julie Menin said the ruling "is a major victory in our fight to ensure New Yorkers get every ounce of money, power and respect to which we're entitled."
Attorneys for civil rights groups and local governments had sued the Census Bureau in an effort to prevent the census from stopping at the end of September. They argued the shortened schedule would undercount residents in minority and hard-to-count communities.
Judge Koh said the inaccuracies would affect the distribution of federal funding and political representation.
The census is used to determine how $1.5 trillion in federal spending is distributed each year and how many congressional seats each state gets.
WEB EXTRA: Click here to complete the 2020 census today
Before the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, the bureau had planned to complete the census by the end of July. In response to the pandemic, it extended the deadline to the end of October.
That changed to the end of September after the Republican-controlled Senate failed to take up a request from the Census Bureau to extend the Dec. 31 deadline for turning over the numbers used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets.
Attorneys for the Census Bureau had argued that the census must finish by the end of September to meet the Dec. 31 deadline.
Koh's preliminary injunction suspends that end-of-the-year deadline, too. The San Jose, California-based judge had previously issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Census Bureau from winding down field operations until she made a ruling in the lawsuit.
Attorneys for the Census Bureau and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the agency, had said during the hearing they would likely appeal if the ruling went against their position. The Commerce Department didn't immediately respond to an email inquiry early Friday.
The civil rights groups and local governments alleged that the the decision to shorten the schedule was made to accommodate a directive from President Donald Trump. Trump's order tried to exclude people in the country illegally from the numbers used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets in a process known as apportionment. A three-judge panel in New York blocked Trump's directive earlier this month, saying it was unlawful. The Trump administration is appealing to the Supreme Court.
"The court's decision ensures that our underrepresented and most vulnerable communities will not be disadvantaged by an unfair and incomplete census count," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which represented some of the plaintiffs. "The court's decision repudiates the 11th hour actions of the Trump administration and makes clear that our democracy turns on achieving a full and fair count of all people across our nation."
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(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
