A federal judge has knocked down a Trump Administration plan to stop the census count by the end of September, requiring the US Census Bureau and the US Department of Commerce to continue the process through October, the Associated Press reports.
The Trump administration had ordered the abbreviated Census schedule, allegedly in an effort to undercount people in cities and other areas that would dilute republican influence in Congress and local legislatures.
The suit was brought by numerous civil rights and minority organizations which argued that the shortened census would intentionally undercount undocumented residents and people in need like the homeless.
In ruling that the government’s burden to continue the Census was greatly outweighed by the public’s interest in getting an accurate population count, saying “the balance of the hardships and public interest tip sharply in Plaintiffs’ favor.”
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Census Bureau pushed back some of their door-knocking activities to contact people who had not returned their census forms. When the Bureau submitted a plan to extend the count, the republican-controlled Senate failed to act on it.
The Trump administration also held off on hiring Census workers until last month–three months later than the hiring during the Obama Administration in 2010.