Every One Counts

Los Angeles – After eight months of roller coaster legal efforts to ensure that the 2020 Census count was not drastically reduced by the Trump administration, City Attorney Mike Feuer announced April 23, that a national coalition of civil rights groups, civic organizations, and tribal and local governments, of which the city of Los Angeles is a part, has resolved its federal lawsuit against the U.S. Census Bureau. The Trump administration’s attempt to cut short both the census count and the data processing efforts in order to announce results prior to leaving office would have severely impacted Los Angeles, one of the hardest regions in the nation to count because of a huge population of renters, immigrants and people without internet access.

“Angelenos have so much riding on accurate Census results, from political representation to our fair share of crucial federal funding. We fought because the Trump administration’s attempts to rush the Census would have undercounted our residents and hurt our City for at least a decade,” said Feuer. “This resolution, achieved with extraordinary partners, will help ensure genuine transparency and fuller, fairer, more reliable results.”

Under the terms of the stipulated order dismissing National Urban League v. Ross (sub. Raimondo):

The Census Bureau will continue to process the population numbers for congressional apportionment and will release those numbers no earlier than April 26, 2021;
The Census Bureau will count every person – as the U.S. Constitution requires — regardless of citizenship status;
The Census Bureau has acknowledged that the citizenship data it was preparing for former President Trump is statistically unfit for use in apportionment and redistricting;
The Census Bureau will continue to assess the enumeration data it obtained during the partially truncated field collection period under the Trump administration and provide the City and the general public with information on its reviews of the quality of this data for the next year.

Feuer and the national coalition sued the Administration in August over its last-minute decision to compress 8.5 months of data collection and processing into just 4.5 months. This four-month reduction would have made it impossible to count every person – both in the City and across the nation.

After a series of rulings in our favor, the Census Bureau was required to continue collecting full data from tens of millions of U.S. residents from September 11 through October 15. The Court prevented the Census Bureau from ending the count on September 30. Millions more people were counted through the end of the extended data collection period on October 15.

In addition to the City of Los Angeles, the plaintiffs in this lawsuit are the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, the League of Women Voters, the Navajo Nation, Gila River Indian Community, Harris County in Texas, Commissioners Rodney Ellis and Adrian Garcia of the Harris County Commissioners Court, King County in Washington, the County of Los Angeles, the cities of San Jose and Salinas, California, and the City of Chicago, Illinois.

The City of Los Angeles is represented in this lawsuit by the City Attorney’s Office. Other plaintiffs are represented by Latham & Watkins LLP, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Brennan Center for Justice, among others.

Review the stipulated order in National Urban League v. Ross here.

In May, 2018, the City of Los Angeles joined California’s lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration over its plan to include a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

In July, 2020, the City of Los Angeles joined the State of California again, plus the Los Angeles Unified School District and the cities of Long Beach and Oakland in a lawsuit demanding that the federal government include undocumented immigrants in the 2020 Census. This was filed in response to President Trump’s memorandum seeking to discount the number of undocumented people in the Census results.

Feuer said at the time, “The Constitution couldn’t be more clear. When it comes to political representation, every person, regardless of immigration status, counts.”

Chief Deputy City Attorney Kathleen A. Kenealy, Senior Assistant City Attorney Valerie Flores, Assistant City Attorney Michael Dundas, and Deputy City Attorney Danielle Goldstein managed the Census Bureau litigation for the City Attorney’s office.