City Attorney Mike Feuer announced Thursday that a coalition that includes the city and county of Los Angeles reached a resolution in a federal lawsuit filed against the U.S. Census Bureau to extend the census processing time that was previously reduced by four months, a move the plaintiffs alleged would have made it impossible to count each person.
“Angelenos have so much riding on accurate census results, from political representation to our fair share of crucial federal funding. We fought because the Trump administration’s attempts to rush the census would have undercounted our residents and hurt our city for at least a decade,” Feuer said. “This resolution, achieved with extraordinary partners, will help ensure genuine transparency and fuller, fairer, more reliable results.”
The lawsuit, titled National Urban League v. Ross, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Under the terms stipulated in the resolution, the Census Bureau:
— will keep processing the population numbers for congressional apportionment and will release the numbers no earlier than April 26;
— will count every person regardless of citizenship status;
— acknowledges that citizenship data it was preparing for former President Donald Trump is statistically unfit for us in apportionment and redistricting; and
— will keep assessing the enumeration data that it obtained during the partially truncated field collection period under the Trump administration and will provide information to the general public on its reviews of the quality of data for the next year.
The coalition of civil rights groups, civic organizations, tribal and local governments filed the lawsuit to ensure the 2020 Census count was not reduced. Under a directive by the former Trump administration, the Census Bureau attempted to reduce the time to collect data and process results from 8 1/2 months to 4 1/2 months.
The court ruled that the Census Bureau could not stop counting on Sept. 30, 2020, and had to continue through Oct. 15, 2020, according to Feuer’s office, which said the extension accounted for millions more people being counted.
The other plaintiffs included the National Urban League; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Black Alliance for Just Immigration; League of Women Voters; the Navajo Nation; Gila River Indian Community; Harris County, Texas; Commissioners Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia of the Harris County Commissioners Court; King County, Washington; and the cities of San Jose and Salinas, California, and Chicago, Illinois.