The 2020 census will end Oct. 5, despite a federal judge’s ruling last week that the head count of every U.S. resident should continue through the end of October, according to a tweet posted on the Census Bureau’s website on Sept. 28.

The tweet said the ability for people to self-respond to the census questionnaire and the door-knocking phase when census takers go to homes that haven’t yet responded is ending Oct. 5.

The announcement came as a follow-up to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s preliminary injunction, which suspended the Census Bureau’s deadline for ending the head count on Sept. 30, allowing for the ending of field operations on Oct. 31.

Koh said the shortened schedule ordered by President Donald Trump’s administration likely would produce inaccurate results that would last a decade. She sided with civil rights groups and local governments that had sued the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce, which oversees the statistical agency, arguing that minorities and others in hard-to-count communities would be missed if the counting ends this month.

Attorneys for the federal government said they were appealing the decision. During hearings, federal government attorneys argued that the head count needed to end Sept. 30 in order to meet a Dec. 31 deadline for handing in figures used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets in a process known as apportionment.

SOURCE: Associated Press – Florida