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Fight Over Ending Census Count Early Goes to Supreme Court

Wilbur Ross Loses Ruling Over Effort to End Census Count Early

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross sought a rescue from the U.S. Supreme Court after two lower courts ordered his department to keep the census count going until the end of the month.

Ross on Wednesday filed an emergency request with the high court hours after a mid-level appeals panel backed a California federal judge who blocked the Trump administration’s plan to curtail the timeline for the once-a-decade nationwide population count. Ross is asking the justices to preserve the administration’s schedule while the litigation continues.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh last month agreed with civil rights groups that argued Ross’s revised timeline to wrap up field operations a month early would result in an undercount of minorities, reducing federal and state funding as well as Congressional representation for the areas they live in. For weeks, Koh has wrestled with administration lawyers over what she has described as its “lurching from one hasty, unexplained plan to the next.”

On Sept. 24, Koh blocked the Commerce Department from moving its deadline for data collection from Oct. 31 to Sept. 30, and for reporting to the president from April 30, 2021, to Dec. 31, 2020. The Commerce Department appealed the ruling.

‘Maximum Accuracy’

Lawyers for Ross argued its shortened deadline to end data-collection by Sept. 30 is required to achieve “maximum accuracy” of the population count and to get a final report to President Donald Trump by Dec. 31.

Even after Koh’s ruling, the judge has continued to receive emails from census field workers explaining that they were ordered to turn in their electronic equipment and can’t continue their work counting people without it.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco supported Koh’s conclusion that Ross and the Census Bureau didn’t rely on a reasoned explanation for its abrupt curtailing of deadlines, amounting to a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

“The government has not made a strong showing that it is likely to prevail on appeal on its primary challenge” to Koh’s ruling, the appeals panel said. But the panel also ruled that the Census Bureau can attempt to make its Dec. 31 deadline for a final report.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The appeals case is National Urban League v. Ross, 20-16868, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit (San Francisco). The lower-court case is, 20-cv-05799, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

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