NEW ORLEANS — A California federal judge’s decision Friday to block the Trump administration’s plan to end the 2020 census a month early could have a major impact on Louisiana.
According to the U.S. Census, 7.5 percent of Louisiana households had not yet been counted with just five days left before the Sept. 30 deadline set by President Donald Trump. Each percentage point undercounted can cost state and local governments $120 million in federal funding, former state Rep. Julie Stokes said, meaning a 7.5-percent undercount could cause Louisiana to miss out on $900 million.
With 92.5 of Louisiana’s occupied housing units counted by Friday, the state was well behind the national average of 97 percent and only Alabama had tallied a lower percentage.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of California granted a temporary restraining order against Trump’s Sept. 30 deadline to complete the count, accepting the argument that delays and restrictions from the pandemic made an early deadline untenable. That restores the traditional Oct. 31 deadline for the time being, but the administration quickly appealed Koh’s ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Louisiana and New Orleans officials said that for the last decade, they have felt the negative effects of an undercount in 2010, when large portions of the population were still displaced or in flux from Hurricane Katrina. The state and local response rates are already better than they were in 2010, but another decade without a full population count would be devastating, said Arthur Walton, intergovernmental affairs director for New Orleans and the city’s point person for the census.
“Our hard-to-count community, that's who we're really focused on; those who, for whatever reason, just aren't filling them out,” Walton said. “There is a distrust or there's a lot of bad information about the census out (there). And I think that motivates some people not to fill it out. And what we're doing on the ground now is trying to dispel that bad information.”
Walton said Black and brown communities are typically undercounted, costing them representation in government and access to government aid and services. Distrust of government and the census process was only exacerbated this year by Trump’s effort to add a citizenship question to census forms. That effort eventually failed.
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump from adding a citizenship question to the census. That meant the census questionnaire that must be filled out by every U.S. household wasn’t even printed or posted online until July.
Some have expressed fear that providing personal information on census forms could be used to track the whereabouts of immigrants who are in the country illegally or those who simply don’t want to be found. Walton sought to ease those concerns.
“On Dec. 31 the president will get a report. In that report your name and address will not be highlighted with an asterisk by it,” he said. “He's just going to get data. And it's really important that the government know how many people are in New Orleans.”
Census takers swear an oath not to disclose identifying information and, by law, the contents of a census form are confidential for 77 years, Walton said. The U.S. Census says anyone convicted of disclosing that information can be sentenced to five years in prison.
Census takers will be on-hand at a major voter-registration drive at Champions Square next to the Superdome on Saturday. Residents can drive through on LaSalle Street to fill out the census forms and remain socially distanced in their vehicles, city officials said.
Walton said the process only takes a few minutes and can also be completed several ways from home.
“You can mail it in, call it in, you can go online,” he said. “There are so many ways now there's really no excuse for you not to have filled it out.”
Census workers are also still visiting housing units that have not responded. About 33 percent of Louisiana households have been counted through these follow-up visits by census takers.