The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that U.S. The Census Bureau could complete its 2020 census on October 31, giving it enough time to process data before the end of the year. The decision, which favors the Trump administration, came with the outspoken disagreement of Judge Sonia Sotomoyer.
“Meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not worth paying,” Sotomayor wrote in his dissent. “Especially when the government has failed to show whether it can afford to spend more resources to meet the deadline or to continue its previous efforts to get an extension from Congress. This court does not usually give extraordinary relief to such a painful disproportionate amount.” The balance of damage. “
Trump-appointed U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross The Census Bureau announced in a Aug. 3 press release that it would finish its count by Sept. 30, a month before the original plan. The Trump administration argued that it needed to be terminated after the December 31, 2020 congressional requirement to crush data before the mandatory deadline.
Personal data collection, a key feature of the census, was forced to suspend in March Nationwide epidemic of Covid-19. The temporary suspension prompted the Census Bureau to initially request an extension for the vote count. “To ensure the completeness and accuracy of the 2020 census, the Census Bureau is seeking legal relief for an additional 150 calendar days for the final census of Congress,” the bureau said in an April press release.
The administration later changed course and announced on August Gust on that it would instead speed up the calculation to meet the legal deadline of December 1, 2020. However, the so-called “replies” came just weeks after President Trump announced plans to exclude undocumented individuals. Immigrants from the count – and representation in Congress – were asked to sue several advocacy groups to block the accelerated count
Excluding undocumented immigrants could potentially be seismic political disruptions. According to a Pew Research Center estimate, if unauthorized immigrants are not counted, California, Texas and Florida will get fewer seats than House of Representatives expect; While Alabama, Minnesota and Ohio, would hold seats, otherwise would have lost.
That replay was challenged before reaching the Supreme Court. A federal judge in California ruled in September that the administration’s plan would not remedy COVID-19 delays, and would instead lead to inaccurate calculations that could lead to “inevitable damage.” The Trump administration was ordered Continue counting until October, Temporarily abandoning plans to finish counting ahead of schedule.
That ruling, however, was only a preliminary injunction for the Trump administration’s “fixed reason for the August 3, 2020 replay.” In response, the administration filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court to allow the bureau to wrap up field operations, arguing that the process needed to be completed by the end of the year to deliver results to the president.
The court on Tuesday granted the request, “pending the filing of an appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States and the submission of an application for a writ of certitory, if such a writ is sought in a timely manner.”
The judges did not explain their order, which is typical for an emergency application. No other justice could sign Sotomayor’s dissent.
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