Federal judge rejects plan to end Census early, giving California more time for count

A federal court in California ordered the Trump administration on Thursday to extend the 2020 Census count deadline by one more month, allowing community-based organizations to continue their outreach efforts through October.

Judge Lucy H. Koh, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, filed a preliminary injunction setting the new census count deadline from Sept. 30 to Oct. 31.

The ruling comes more than a month after, Steve Dillingham, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, announced a proposal to halt field data collection one month earlier than planned so the agency could meet its deadline to provide data used to determine how many congressional seats each state receives. That timeline would have ended the count on Sept. 30.

Judge Koh held in her ruling that ending census outreach in September, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, could lead to an undercount and the “loss of crucial funds” for programs, as well as the loss of political power.

“For example, given the historically low census response rates in the City of Los Angeles and City of Salinas in California, the (revised plan) creates a substantial risk that their residents will not be counted, and a substantial risk of diminished political representation,” according to Koh.

By Friday, the Trump administration appealed the order, according to NPR.

The federal court ruling sides with the National Urban League and a coalition of civil rights organizations and local governments, including the cities of Los Angeles, Salinas and San Jose that filed a lawsuit in August against the Trump administration for shortening the census count timeline.

Without the injunction, Koh wrote “plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm.”

Samuel Molina, California state director of Mi Familia Vota, a civic engagement organization, called the order a victory. The organization, located in Fresno, will continue its census outreach operations, with a focus to reach Latino communities in Central Valley and the Inland Empire.

“If we’re not adequately counted, it’s detrimental to our communities,” he said. “This extra time is what it’s going to take to make sure that we have a better count at the end.”

Molina estimates the extension will allow volunteers to count an additional 20,000 to 30,000 people.

“The reason why California can be so difficult to count is because of its large immigrant population,” he said, adding that the state’s population size can also make it difficult to conduct census outreach.

During a press conference on Friday, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer celebrated the ruling and said an inaccurate count would lead to the loss of millions in federal funding and congressional representation.

“Last night, the court strongly agreed with our approach and ruled that the Trump administration could not put in place, imminent deadlines, under which it was planning to stop census outreach and counting next week,” Feuer said. “With so much on the line, I urge everyone to take the few minutes necessary to be counted in the census.”

In July, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration over a memorandum to exclude undocumented immigrants from the 2020 Census formula used to calculate the number of congressional seats each state is given. The memorandum would have striked an estimated 2 million undocumented Californians.

A federal court in New York rejected Trump’s memorandum in September.

California was also among several states to challenge the Trump administration over the addition of a citizenship question to the census in 2018 when Becerra filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Immigrant advocates and state leaders argued the question would dissuade immigrant communities from participating in the census.

As of yesterday, California’s self-response rate is at 68.8%, about two percentage points higher than the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s website.

This story was originally published September 25, 2020 at 2:17 PM.