State AG joins fight against fed's attempts to reduce census efforts

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined a large coalition of attorneys general, cities, counties, and the bipartisan U.S. Conference of Mayors in taking legal action against Trump Administration actions regarding the 2020 Decennial Census.

Last month, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that it was reducing — by one month, from Oct. 31 to Sept. 30 — the time in which self-response questionnaires will be accepted and door-to-door follow-ups by census enumerators will take place.

The coalition filed an amicus brief in National Urban League v. Ross, supporting the plaintiffs’ request for a nationwide stay or preliminary injunction to halt this “Rush Plan.”

The coalition argues that this expedited schedule will hamstring the bureau’s ongoing efforts to conduct the census and will thus impair the accuracy of its enumeration of the total population of each state.

In the brief — filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California —the coalition of 23 attorneys general, five cities, four counties, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, argues that amici have a direct stake in this dispute, as the decennial census determines the states’ political representation in Congress, provides critical data for states’ redistricting efforts, and affects hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding to states and localities.

An undercount would severely impact Michigan and other immigrant-rich states, Nessel said.

A district court previously found — in the litigation over the citizenship question — that even a small undercount would raise a “significant risk of an apportionment loss” to Michigan and other similar states, she added.

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