DrLove
Diamond Member
Jesus, what a DICK.
A federal judge ruled Saturday that the Trump administration must stop plans to halt in-person census counting early — at least temporarily.
The long-term fight over the administration’s efforts to shorten the census data collection period will continue under the decision, which resulted in a temporary restraining order from US District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California. Koh’s order requires the administration to stop scaling back counting efforts until at least September 17, when another court hearing will help determine when counting will end.
The potential consequences are vast: The census count influences not only the number of representatives each state gets in Congress, but how much federal funding each state receives — and how voting district lines are drawn for the next decade.
Ahead of the coronavirus pandemic, census data collection was scheduled to conclude on August 15; however, it was extended until October 31 given the challenges the pandemic created, particularly around in-person outreach — a key way of ensuring hard-to-count populations are included in the final tally.
In early August, the bureau announced it would end counting at the end of September instead, arguing doing so was necessary to meet the December 31 deadline to send the final numbers to Congress. Work to wind down counting is already underway, according to the associate director of the census, who said in court filings that the agency had already started firing temporary employees in some areas.
A number of civil rights groups, local governments, and the Navajo Nation — among others — sued over the new deadline, and Koh determined communities would likely experience irreparable harm if the census count was cut short.
“An inaccurate count would not be remedied for another decade,” Koh wrote. That “would affect the distribution of federal and state funding, the deployment of services, and the allocation of local resources for a decade.”
The Trump administration began scaling back the census count. A judge stopped it — for now.
The Trump administration wanted to end the 2020 census a month early. A judge temporarily blocked its plan.
www.vox.com