A federal judge has issued an order blocking the Trump administration’s latest effort to cut short 2020 census operations, a major win in the fight for a fair and accurate census count.

The Brennan Center, together with a coalition of allies and stakeholders, filed suit in August to block the Trump administration’s abrupt decision to halt census operations on September 30, a month earlier than it had previously announced. After Judge Lucy Koh blocked that plan, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced that the Census Bureau would continue field operations past September 30 — but only until October 5. In blocking the administration’s second attempt to end the census early, Judge Koh said that in “lurching from one hasty, unexplained plan to the next,” the administration was unlawfully jeopardizing the accuracy and completeness of the 2020 census.

As the Brennan Center’s Thomas Wolf explained to the Washington Post, the Census Bureau’s attempts to cut census operations short threaten “a massive undercount that will disproportionately affect our country’s communities of color.”

For up-to-date information on the fast-moving lawsuit and to view key filings, please visit the Brennan Center’s case page.

Some Missouri lawmakers are claiming that passage of a controversial proposed constitutional amendment this November would let the state draw legislative districts to equalize adult citizens rather than total population, the current practice in all 50 states.

A new Brennan Center study shows just how devastating such a move would be for the state’s communities of color. A quarter of all Missourians — 90 percent of whom are children — would go uncounted if the change occurs, including 28 percent of its Black population and more than half of both its Latino and Asian populations.

Gerrymandering rigs electoral outcomes, but sometimes gerrymanderers can get too clever for their own good. The division of Austin, Texas into six congressional districts in 2011 is a prime example. Although the move was intended to deprive heavily Democratic Austin of its own congressional district, the rapid growth and increasing diversity of Austin has instead meant that many of the districts that include a part of Austin have become among the most competitive in the nation. By contrast, creation of the Austin-centered district as proposed by Democrats (TX-25 in the map above) almost certainly would have meant fewer at-risk districts for Republicans in 2020.

• Join the Brennan Center and the NYU Law Review on Thursday, October 8 at 12 p.m. for Day 2 of our Voting and Representation Symposium. Panel topics include “Fair Representation in an Increasingly Diverse America” and “Building a More Inclusive Democracy.” Click here to RSVP.
• The Supreme Court has agreed to fast-track the early stages of an appeal from the Trump administration that aims to exclude undocumented immigrants from the data used to determine congressional apportionment.
• The editorial board of the Washington Post has called the redistricting reform amendment that will be on the Virginia ballot this November a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to dampen political opportunism and manipulation.”
• The Schwarzenegger Institute at the University of Southern California has released a preliminary report looking at how the California Citizens Redistricting Commission has done through initial phases in ensuring racial and ethnic diversity on the commission.
• According to a new analysis from the Cook Political Report, over half of U.S. House seats will not be able to be easily gerrymandered in the coming redistricting cycle thanks to independent commissions, partisan fairness standards, and split control of state governments.