A federal judge on Thursday issued a clarification order stating that the Census Bureau must inform its employees that it is not changing the deadline for its 2020 census data collection efforts.
The ruling outlines the bureau’s “repeated violations” of a preliminary injunction issued by Lucy Koh, district judge of the Northern District of California, that blocked the bureau from moving the census deadline from Oct. 31 to Sept. 30. The “most egregious” of those violations, Koh said, was a one-sentence tweet on Monday.
“At 1:58 p.m., two minutes before the Court’s case management conference, the Census Bureau tweeted one sentence: ‘The Secretary of Commerce has announced a target date of October 5, 2020 to conclude 2020 Census self-response and field data collection operations,'” the order said. “Secretary Ross approved the October 5 date 14 minutes after the Census Bureau tweeted the October 5 date.”
The Secretary of Commerce has announced a target date of October 5, 2020 to conclude 2020 Census self-response and field data collection operations.
— U.S. Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau) September 28, 2020
Despite the bureau’s claim that neither the tweet nor the subsequent press release constituted “final agency action,” the court ordered the bureau to issue a correction in the form of a text message to bureau employees affirming that the deadline for census data collection is still Oct. 31.
Koh continued to outline the bureau’s “chaotic, dilatory, and incomplete compliance with the Injunction Order,” saying that emails sent to the court “suggest ongoing non-compliance in the field.”
In the clarifying order, Koh wrote that were the bureau to “cure all legal defects identified in the Injunction Order” and outline “the steps Defendants have taken to prevent future violations,” it would have the legal standing to change the deadline.
Since 1930, Census Day has been April 1. Despite the common misconception, the bureau emphasizes that Census Day is not a deadline, but it is the date the bureau uses to determine who has yet to be counted and where census takers need to be sent. The deadline for 2020 was July 31, per the bureau’s Operational Plan Version 4.0.
In April, however, after the coronavirus pandemic led to nationwide lockdowns, the deadline was pushed back to Oct. 31. Since a separate legal proceeding in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit “denied Defendants’ motion for an administrative stay of the Injunction Order,” the Oct. 31 deadline holds.
The bureau’s online timeline has been updated to reflect the order.
“All offices are scheduled to complete their work by October 5, 2020,” according to its website.
As of Oct. 1, the Census Bureau’s collection efforts are 99.1% complete.
