Let's read the entire story in the proper context... the decision only halts the Census count while the lower court appeal completes. It's not really a strong victory for either side. Supreme Court grants Trump administration's request to halt census count while appeal plays out https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/politics/supreme-court-census/index.html The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted a request from the Trump administration to halt the census count while an appeal plays out over a lower court's order that it continue. The administration had asked the high court for "immediate relief" because a lower court order would have required the census count to continue until October 31. The Trump administration argued that would have prevented Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross from delivering a count of the nation's population to President Donald Trump by December 31. The ruling is a win for the administration, which argued the shortened deadline is necessary to give the Commerce Department enough time to meet the December deadline. The administration noted that the count had been delayed by Covid-19 but that if the time spent counting were shortened, that deadline could still be met. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the order, fearing that the shortened timeline would produce inaccurate results. "Because the harms associated with an inaccurate census are avoidable and intolerable, I respectfully dissent from the grant of stay," she wrote. No other justice noted a dissent. Tuesday's order is just the latest twist in what's become a long-running political dispute and is likely to fuel fresh scrutiny over the accuracy of the bureau's US population count. The Trump administration has exerted unprecedented political influence over the survey in ways that critics say will advantage Republicans in upcoming elections, including by rushing the process and seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants. In late July and early August, Ross directed Census officials to come up with a plan to condense the door knocking operation, shorten the number-crunching process and meet the December 31 deadline. Officials warned in internal emails reviewed by CNN that such a count would be of tally of "unacceptable quality" with "fatal flaws" and carry the stain of "politically manipulated results." In one email, Ross asked if a shortened schedule would allow the numbers to be produced during Trump's presidency. That suggested a concern that Republican leadership, rather than a potential Joe Biden presidency, make determinations over who is counted, while also risking a significant undercount of the population in as many as 10 states. The political showdown over the census has played out alongside the coronavirus pandemic, which took hold in the US as the massive once-a-decade count was getting underway. The agency suspended field operations for a time, although that work eventually resumed in some areas. The census determines how many representatives each state gets in Congress and how billions of dollars in federal funding is spent. Schools, roads and other important things in communities will gain -- or lose -- funding over the next 10 years depending on this official population tally. And while this year's census has relied more heavily on collecting responses by phone, mail or online, the operation still needs a robust field operation to reach minority communities as well as students on college campuses, seniors in assisted living facilities and people experiencing homelessness. Not only are these groups at high risk for coronavirus infection, they're also among those most in need of in-person outreach.
The court decision is sort of meaningless at this point because the Census response rate nationally is now 99.9% and 99.9% in every state. This is up from approx. 93% on October 1st. Allowing these 13 days of October to proceed with enumeration allowed the Census to effectively complete. https://2020census.gov/en/response-rates/nrfu.html
The Trump is administration is claiming that ending the Census early will allow the Census Bureau to submit tabulations excluding unauthorized immigrants by the end of the year. As outlined in the NYT article... the Times also positions it as a major win for the Trump administration based on that it may allow them to exclude illegal immigrants. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/us/supreme-court-census.html (Personally I don't see how the Trump administration will be able to exclude illegal immigrants when they did not ask the question in the Census if the person was in the U.S. legally.)
You will not have the 2020 Census count by election time. The preliminary count is due at the end of 2020.
Census Bureau Stops Work On Trump's Request For Unauthorized Immigrant Count https://www.npr.org/2021/01/13/9563...umps-request-for-unauthorized-immigrant-count The U.S. Census Bureau has halted all work on President Trump's directive to produce a state-by-state count of unauthorized immigrants that would have been used to alter a key set of census numbers, NPR has learned. Senior career officials at the bureau instructed the internal team assigned to carry out Trump's presidential memo to stand down and cease their work immediately on Tuesday night, according to a bureau employee who spoke to NPR on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation in the workplace for speaking out. The move by civil servants effectively ends the bureau's participation in Trump's bid to make an unprecedented change to who is counted in the 2020 census numbers that will be used to reallocate each state's share of congressional seats and Electoral College votes for the next decade. According to the 14th Amendment, those counts must include the "whole number of persons in each state." The president's memo, which was issued in July, was found to be unlawful, unconstitutional or both by three lower courts last year before the Supreme Court ruled in December that it was too early for any court to weigh in because the case is "riddled with contingencies and speculation." Trump's effort has already been hampered by schedule delays stemming from irregularities in the census records that, in addition to the coronavirus pandemic, have resulted in the bureau extending the time for running quality checks and pushing back the release for the first set of census results. This week, a Justice Department attorney informed a federal judge that the state population counts needed for reapportioning House seats and electoral votes are not expected to be ready until March 6, more than a month into the administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has condemned Trump's attempt to exclude unauthorized immigrants. The Census Bureau's public information office did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment. On Tuesday, another Trump administration push for data about unauthorized immigrants, as well as other noncitizens in the U.S., suffered a blow after the bureau's internal watchdog issued a memo revealing that the agency's Trump-appointed director had pressured employees to produce a report by Friday. According to a memo by Commerce Department Inspector General Peggy Gustafson, multiple whistleblowers at the bureau reported that they are concerned Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham is trying to rush out a data report on noncitizens that would be "statistically indefensible" and could be "misinterpreted, misused, or otherwise tarnish the Bureau's reputation." It remains unclear what the Trump administration would do with the data report on noncitizens. Gustafson has asked Dillingham, whose appointment at the bureau is set to continue past the end of the Trump administration and until the end of this year, to provide a written explanation by Thursday. In response to NPR's reporting on Dillingham's directive, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds the bureau, issued a tweet criticizing Trump for making"a mission out of manipulating the census." The senator said she willwork with the Biden administration to "repair the damage Trump caused."
Census Bureau says Trump's push to exclude undocumented is dead The Census Bureau said in a statement on Saturday it has agreed not to release data used to apportion congressional seats until after "the change of [a]dministration" on Jan. 20. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/...ed-biden-trump-undocumented-immigrants-459893 Outgoing President Donald Trump’s plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census totals used to apportion congressional seats is officially dead. The Census Bureau announced Saturday that data on apportionment — and a related calculation of the number of undocumented immigrants Trump has specifically requested — would not be released until after President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in. Biden has said he opposed Trump’s efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants, who have historically been included. “Neither the Census Bureau nor the Department of Commerce will report or publicly disclose any population counts or estimates relating to the population as of April 1, 2020, including counts or estimates of the illegal alien/undocumented immigrant population, prior to the change of Administration on January 20, 2021,” the Census Bureau said in a statement. The agreement arose from a suit from the National Urban League, and other plaintiffs opposed to the plan, over the accuracy of the census. The announcement also said a similar prohibition applies to data related directly to Trump’s controversial memorandum. The agreement pauses the case for 21 days, and if data is available before the end of the stay, the government would need to give plaintiffs 7 days’ notice. Earlier in the week, Department of Justice attorneys told the court that it is unlikely that apportionment data would be released until early March. In the order, which was filed late on Friday, the government stated that the apportionment data “will not be in position to finalize or provide apportionment data until many weeks after January 20.” The statutory deadline for the release of apportionment data was Dec. 31, 2020. However, the pandemic scrambled the bureau’s schedule, even as the Trump administration tried to rush the collection and processing of data to release it before the end of his term. The announcement comes at a tumultuous time for the Census Bureau. Several key Democratic lawmakers told POLITICO this week that bureau director Steven Dillingham, who was appointed to lead the agency by Trump in early 2019 and confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate, should resign, or be removed from his post once Biden takes office. The calls for Dillingham’s removal follows the Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General releasing a memo earlier this week, which alleged that Dillingham was pressuring career staff to rush a technical report on data on undocumented people in the United States. Dillingham said in response to the OIG memo that he told career staff to stand down. “I call on Dr. Dillingham to immediately resign from his position as Director of the Census Bureau because I no longer have faith that he can lead the Bureau to produce a fair, accurate, and complete 2020 Census count as required by the Constitution,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement following POLITICO’s reporting.
Census Bureau chief resigns a year early https://www.axios.com/census-bureau-chief-resigns-trump-fa810428-0551-4cf1-800b-5282d65aa2c0.html Census Bureau Director Steven Dillingham announced his resignation on Monday, ending his term nearly a year before it ends. Why it matters: Dillingham's resignation comes a week after multiple employee whistleblowers told the bureau's internal watchdog that they were under pressure to gather and publish rushed data on documented and undocumented immigrants. Bureau employees said they were concerned that the data would be inaccurate, did not fully understand what they were being asked to analyze, and that "incomplete data could be misinterpreted, misused or otherwise tarnish the Bureau's reputation," the Commerce Department told Dillingham in a Jan. 12 memo. Where it stands: In a Jan. 14 response letter to the agency, Dillingham said that those involved in the data collection were to "stand down" and stop data reviews. What he's saying: "None of us could anticipate that as we fully launched the 2020 Census, a global health crisis would upend a schedule and plans which had been carefully constructed over a decade," he said in a farewell letter to his colleagues. "Nor would we anticipate the impact this crisis would have on our numerous vital household surveys and economic products which guide decisions across the public, private, and not-for-profit sector." The big picture: The Supreme Court in December dismissed a challenge against Trump's attempt to exclude undocumented immigrants from influencing congressional apportionment determined by the 2020 Census. As noted by the New York Times, the White House installed four high-ranking political appointees in the bureau while it pushed for a count of undocumented immigrants.