Thread by @tomTMwolf

🚨 BREAKING CENSUS NEWS: The Trump administration pledges it will stand down on reporting #2020Census numbers—including, but not limited to, citizenship numbers—in a significant victory for our lawsuit challenging the rushed count. 🧵👇 @BrennanCenter

The “we”: the relentless coalition of @BrennanCenter @LawyersComm @lathamwatkins @NatUrbanLeague @LWV @BAJItweet @NAACP @CityAttorneyLA @sliccardo @Chicago @CountyofLA @GRIC_Official and the Navajo Nation, who have been fighting, 24/7, since the summer on this case.

The basic details…

The federal government has pledged in writing to a federal court that it will not release any census data—including citizenship data for apportionment or redistricting—during the remainder of Trump's term. @BrennanCenter

In exchange, we have agreed to a three-week pause in our case, which has been traveling quickly toward trial in March.

This pledge has been memorialized in a joint stipulation filed this evening in the federal court in the Northern District of California and accepted by Judge Koh.

What this means...

1. This ENDS any attempts to rush the count out before Trump leaves office and, by extension, to rush out numbers with undocumented people removed. Before today, the admin. had not expressly committed to this, only suggested the rush might be off.

Now, it is officially OFF.

2. The Census Bureau will have more time to work on the numbers before they are released, instead of facing an artificial deadline of completing the task before President Trump leaves office. This increases the likelihood of a full, fair, and accurate count.

3. The Presidential Memorandum to exclude undocumented people from the Count—which was in front of SCOTUS at the end of November—will NOT be implemented under Trump. This ensures that the count won't be illegally reduced, in violation of the Constitution and federal statutes.

(For more on the Exclusion Memo and how SCOTUS handled it: brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…)

4. This agreement is a next step, not the final step. Our case is on pause, not concluded.

We will continue to work to get all the time necessary to ensure that communities of color and other undercounted communities are fully counted and receive the political power and federal funding that the law guarantees them.

We will also continue to hold the federal government to the highest standard. And we’re looking ahead to the next steps in the case.

And, make no mistake, there have already been many steps in this case! We filed our complaint back in August. brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…

Within weeks we were winning and defending significant court orders extending counting to Oct. 15.
brennancenter.org/our-work/analy…

Only a late ruling from SCOTUS’s shadow docket stopped us from getting the full extension to Oct. 31 we sought.
nytimes.com/2020/10/13/us/…

Following that ruling, we pressed forward to ensure that the Bureau had enough time to process all the data it had collected.

We didn’t give up.

We worked harder.

Which brings us to today: the Trump administration will stop trying to rush the count. @BrennanCenter

Now, we look forward to finishing the job.

For more on this case as it develops, visit our frequently updated case page: brennancenter.org/our-work/court…

And for more on @BrennanCenter’s census project, visit our website: brennancenter.org/issues/gerryma…