The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration can end its census field operations early, a decision that has angered the Left, who claim it will prevent minority and hard-to-enumerate communities from being properly counted.
The ruling, however, was not a complete loss for liberal groups, as they managed to score two extra weeks of counting while their case, brought against the administration over its decision to end counting early, made its way through court.
Critics of the president say the move will give the White House undue power in determining how much federal funding and how many congressional seats are allotted to states.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, the Census Bureau said field operations would end on Thursday.
At issue was a request by the Trump administration that the Supreme Court suspend a lower court’s order extending the 2020 census through the end of October following delays caused by the pandemic. The Trump administration argued that the head count needed to end immediately to give the bureau time to meet a year-end deadline. Congress requires the bureau to turn in by Dec. 31 the figures used to decide the states’ congressional seats — a process known as apportionment.
By sticking to the deadline, the Trump administration would end up controlling the numbers used for the apportionment, no matter who wins next month’s presidential election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement in which she called the Supreme Court’s decision “regrettable and disappointing,” and said the administration’s actions “threaten to politically and financially exclude many in America’s most vulnerable communities from our democracy.”
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the high court’s decision, saying “respondents will suffer substantial injury if the Bureau is permitted to sacrifice accuracy for expediency.”
The plaintiffs in the case were a coalition of local governments and civil-rights groups who argued that minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the census ended early. They said the schedule was cut short to accommodate a July order from President Trump that would exclude illegal aliens from being counted in the numbers used for apportionment.
Opponents of the order said the White House is acting in accordance with Republican redistricting guru Thomas Hofeller, who had advocated using voting-age citizens instead of the total population when it came to drawing legislative seats.
Prior to the Supreme Court taking up the case, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, sided with the plaintiffs last month, issuing an injunction suspending a September 30 deadline for finishing the 2020 census and a December 31 deadline for submitting the apportionment numbers, causing the deadlines to go back to a previous Census Bureau plan that had field operations ending October 31 and the reporting of apportionment figures at the end of April 2021.
The Census Bureau and Commerce Department then picked an October 5 end date, which Koh also struck down, accusing officials of “lurching from one hasty, unexplained plan to the next … and undermining the credibility of the Census Bureau and the 2020 Census.”
An appellate court panel later upheld Koh’s order allowing the census to continue through October, but shot down the part that suspended the December 31 deadline for apportionment numbers. The three-judge panel on the appellate court said that just because the year-end deadline is impossible to meet doesn’t justify the court in requiring the Census Bureau to miss it.
“Every day has mattered, and the Supreme Court’s order staying the preliminary injunction does not erase the tremendous progress that has been made as a result of the district court’s rulings,” said Melissa Sherry, one of the attorneys for the coalition, in regard to the lawsuit gaining her side more time to have additional people counted in the Census.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, whose city was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said his town lost $200 million in federal funding over the decade following the 2010 census, and he feared it would lose more this time.
“A census count delayed is justice denied,” Liccardo lamented.
If the Left’s idea of “justice” is counting illegal aliens in order to give inordinate political representation and federal funding to jurisdictions that refuse to enforce immigration law, then “denying” it is the right thing for the White House to do.
