SCOTUS allows this year’s census to end

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Census count could be coming to an early finish after all. The Supreme Court blocked a lower court order that requires the Trump administration to continue gathering census information in the field until the end of October, allowing the government to stop the count.

The Census Bureau said it wanted to stop the count so that it could start processing the data in order to meet a December 31 deadline, set in federal law, for reporting the results to the president. But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the government to keep going with fieldwork until October 31, concluding that a longer time in the field would increase accuracy.

This year’s process began on time, but field operations were suspended in March in response to the COVID pandemic.

The Commerce Department asked Congress for a four-month delay in the deadline for reporting the results, but an extension was neither granted or denied.

The government said it has already enumerated 99.7% of all households, which it called comparable to the rate of past census counts.

Separately, the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to let the government report two census figures to the president, one tabulated the usual way, and the other omitting people who are undocumented immigrants. A lower court blocked the government from leaving them out of the count.

The Justice Department is asking the court to hear and decide that case by the end of the year, but the court hasn’t yet said when it will take up that issue.

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