US census: Trump administration can end count early, says Supreme Court
- Published
'Get Counted' events have been held to promote the national census, which takes places once a decade
The Trump administration can immediately end counting for the 2020 census, the US Supreme Court has ruled.
The administration has insisted it needs extra time to process the data and deliver it to the president by the end-of-year legal deadline.
However, civil rights groups are concerned that people will be unaccounted for, particularly minorities.
The once-in-a-decade survey had been set to continue until 31 October.
According to the Constitution, every person in the US should be included in the household survey. Its data is used to determine Congressional seats, voting districts and the allocation of federal funding.
Critics are concerned that the Trump administration is rushing the process to ensure it will have control of the numbers, whoever wins the presidential election on 3 November.
The Justice Department made an emergency request to bring the process to an early close last week.
It followed a decision by a lower court - now overturned - to keep the voting going until the end of the month, as a result of a legal challenge by civil rights groups and local governments, who are concerned about hard-to-reach communities being left out.
Since May, the Census Bureau has reported delays in the counting, owing to the pandemic.
The Justice Department says only Congress can extend the deadline, so complaints should be directed there.
"Contrary to what Plaintiffs may think, the Bureau is not free to disregard a statutory deadline in pursuit of some ethereal notion of a better census," wrote Justice Department lawyers in a court filing.
The Supreme Court did not provide an explanation for its ruling on ending the count. Only one justice - Justice Sonia Sotomayor - dissented.
"Meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying, especially when the Government has failed to show why it could not bear the lesser cost of expending more resources to meet the deadline or continuing its prior efforts to seek an extension from Congress," she wrote.
President Trump has repeatedly said undocumented immigrants should not be included in the census.
In September, a judge ruled that his attempts to block their inclusion was unlawful, however this is expected to be appealed at the Supreme Court.
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