Judge Extends Census Deadline, Appeal Expected

An effort by the Trump administration to stop collecting data for this year’s census at the end of September was derailed Thursday evening, with a federal judge in California ruling that the government must continue the nationwide count through the end of October.

The Trump administration had previously claimed it would have to wrap up the census at the end of September to deliver a complete count by the end of the year.

But the federal judge, on Thursday, ruled that a group that sued the federal government over that decision, called the National Urban League, would suffer irreparable harm if the census was cut off at the end of September.

Previous court filings in the case had revealed communications in which members of the Trump administration expressed concerns about the accuracy of the census if the federal government ended its efforts next week.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh had questioned the Trump administration about those filings in a virtual hearing in the case Thursday, according to NPR.

The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to appeal the ruling, meaning the count could still be cut short. For now, Democrats in New York cheered the decision Friday.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led a coalition of state attorneys general, cities, and counties in a filing in support of the National Urban League, chalked the decision up to another legal win against the federal government.

“We have repeatedly taken the president to court over his attempts to politicize the census, and we will continue to do so whenever he tries to put politics above the Constitution,” James said.

James, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union, had previously sued the Trump administration over its efforts to ask about citizenship on the census.

That case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled last year that the administration hadn’t taken the necessary steps to add the question to the survey.