Trump administration lawyer says apportionment data may not be ready until February

A Justice Department attorney said Monday that the census population count used to apportion House seats for the next decade may not be ready until February, which would thwart President Donald Trump’s plans to exclude certain immigrant populations from the total.

John Coghlan, a deputy assistant attorney general who is representing the government in the case, said that as of late December, the Census Bureau did not expect to be able to release apportionment data until Feb. 9, well after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated.

The Justice Department also said that date could be pushed back further yet because of potential new anomalies discovered within the data.

A delivery date after noon on Jan. 20, once Biden is sworn in, would effectively end Trump’s attempts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the total. Biden has said he opposed the plan, and historically those people have been included in the count.

Spokespeople for the Census Bureau and the Commerce Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Bureau acknowledged last week that it would miss the statutory deadline to provide said data, which was Dec. 31, a position it has long maintained was possible.

“The schedule for reporting this data is not static. Projected dates are fluid,” an unsigned statement from the Census Bureau issued on Dec. 30 read. “We continue to process the data collected and plan to deliver a complete and accurate state population count for apportionment in early 2021, as close to the statutory deadline as possible.”

Trump’s bid to exclude certain people from the count has been under near-constant legal scrutiny since he issued it in July. Studies show a successful effort to remove undocumented immigrants from the count would benefit Republicans in the next round of redistricting.

Earlier in December, the Supreme Court punted on a challenge to the constitutionality of his memorandum, with the court’s conservative justices all appearing to agree that the case challenging it was premature, with the three liberal justices saying the nation’s highest court should weigh in now to strike down the president’s attempts to exclude populations.

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.