A filing in the case by the government last week revealed that the Census Bureau had already begun ratcheting down the count.
A federal court judge ordered the Trump administration to stop winding down census operations until a court hearing later this month over whether the 2020 count should keep going through October. U. S. District Judge Lucy Koh in the Northern District of California granted a temporary restraining order requested Thursday by plaintiffs who have sued the government over its surprise decision last month to end the count a month earlier than it had planned. A filing in the case by the government last week revealed that the Census Bureau had already begun ratcheting down the count, prompting the civil rights groups and local jurisdictions that filed the suit to ask for the order. The order is set to last until a Sept.17 court hearing over the plaintiffs’ request for counting to continue until Oct.31, the date the Census Bureau set months ago in response to coronavirus-related delays. The government had asked Congress for an additional four months to report its data – a delay the House approved in its coronavirus relief bill but the Senate has yet to approve. Census officials said publicly in July that because of the pandemic-related delays, the bureau could no longer deliver a full and accurate count by the constitutionally mandated deadline of Dec.31. The modified schedule the bureau had been working with would have meant the data would have been delivered April 30, 2021. But in early August the government reversed course and said it would keep to the December deadline. The ruling blocks the government from implementing plans laid out in a leaked Aug.3 internal document outlining steps the bureau could take to speed up its operations.
