US Supreme Court allows Trump to wind down census early

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday (Oct 13) allowed President Donald Trump's administration to wind down population counting for the 2020 US census sooner than planned, in a blow to civil rights groups worried about an undercount, particularly of racial minorities.

The justices blocked a lower-court ruling that had ordered the decennial population count be continued until Oct 31. The Census Bureau said on Aug 3 that it could wind down data collection by Sep 30, per month earlier than originally scheduled.

The Supreme Court's order was a loss for municipalities including LA, the counties that include Houston and Seattle, and civil rights groups including the National Urban League that sued to want to get the later deadline reinstated.

The Trump administration said it changed the timeline to be able to meet a Dec 31 deadline set by statute for delivering census leads to the president.

Critics have said that the Republican president, who is seeking re-election the following month, has sought to engineer an undercount in Democratic-leaning areas with high immigrant and Latino populations.

The census count's accuracy is critical, as it determines how the US House of Representatives and state legislatures draw voting districts through the next round of redistricting and guides the government in allocating US$1.5 trillion a year in aid.

The plaintiffs argued that the "rushed" schedule would result in inaccurate census results and "a massive undercount of the country's communities of color". 

They said within an Oct 10 filing that a ruling for the Trump administration would allow it "to avoid the 2020 Census count, turn off-field operations, fire hundreds of thousands of employees, and begin processing data the very next day".

US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, has repeatedly ruled against the Census Bureau, says the accelerated schedule may likely produce inaccurate numbers.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only justice who publicly dissented, said the Supreme Court's action allows the Census Bureau to "sacrifice accuracy for expediency".

The Justice Department, arguing for the Census Bureau, said complaints about the timeline ought to be raised with Congress, which may extend the statutory deadline.

"Unlike what Plaintiffs may think, the Bureau is not absolved to disregard a statutory deadline in pursuit of some ethereal notion of an improved census," Justice Department attorneys said in a court filing.

“Under the Constitution, the federal government must conduct a complete and accurate Census, and this duty shouldn't be trumped by adherence to a statutory deadline that never envisioned a once-in-a-generation pandemic," said Representative Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, which includes investigating the Trump administration's handling of the census.