Groups file lawsuit to block Trump census ‘Rush Plan’

In a move that could affect legislative redistricting in New Jersey, a coalition of civil rights groups, local officials, and the League of Women Voters have filed a legal challenge to block the Trump administration for shortening the U.S. Census count for 2020.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that the “Rush Plan” that proposes excluding undocumented immigrants from legislative and congressional apportionment numbers.

“Both the text of the Rush Plan announcement and the timing of the decision suggest that the federal government’s motivation for the Rush Plan is to facilitate another illegal act: suppressing the political power of communities of color by excluding undocumented people from the final apportionment count,” the lawsuit stated. “To increase the chance that the President can fully effectuate the apportionment exclusion order, he must receive the population totals while he is still in office.”

The New Jersey Legislature has placed a constitutional amendment on the November 3 ballot for voter approval that holds the 2011 legislative map in place until 2023 if the U.S. Census doesn’t certify their numbers by February 15, 2021.

The plaintiffs in the case – including the Brennan Center for Justice, the National Urban League, and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration – maintain that the Trump administration plan cuts four weeks from the actual count and four months from the time to process and report data to the states.

According to the lawsuit, the ignores its own plan for dealing with delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic and will lead to a considerable undercount of communities of color.

“The Trump administration’s snap decision to rush the 2020 Census to a close in the face of a worsening pandemic and in violation of the Bureau’s own expert judgment is both unjustified and unjustifiable,” said Thomas Wolf, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.  “The decision runs counter to common sense and constitutional law, discarding the Census Bureau’s duty to ensure a full, fair, accurate, and non-discriminatory count for absolutely no reason.’

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has been named as a defendant in the suit.