A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to continue the Census count through October instead of stopping it at the end of this month as they had planned.
In July, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross ordered the Census Bureau to speed up counting and end on September 30.
On Thursday, California District court Judge Lucy Koh ruled that the count must continue through October after hearing arguments from attorneys for the Census Bureau, and attorneys for civil rights groups and local governments that had sued the Census Bureau in an effort to halt the 2020 census from stopping at the end of the month.
Attorneys for the civil rights groups and local governments said the shortened schedule would undercount residents in minority and hard-to-count communities, Politico reports.
Koh’s preliminary injunction requires the bureau to keep counting the population through Oct. 31. The Justice Department is expected to appeal the decision.
