Attorneys want sanctions against DOJ over 2020 census data

In the same court filing, the Trump administration attorneys said they havent violated any orders to produce documents, adding that any blame should be on the coalitions attorneys for making their requests too broad.In some cases, the government attorneys are still working to provide the requested information.

Attorneys for a coalition of municipalities and advocacy groups say they plan to seek court sanctions against Trump administration attorneys for refusing to turn over data and documents about the quality of the 2020 census as part of a lawsuit over the once-a-decade count of every US resident. Attorneys for the coalition said Monday in a court filing that the Department of Justice has produced data reports for only half of the requests they have made. When Trump administration attorneys did provide information, it was buried in thousands of pages of irrelevant material such as emails for pizza and handbag advertisements and LinkedIn notifications, according to the court filing.

The attorneys for the coalition described the Trump administration's playbook as “deny information and the existence of documents; produce dribs and drabs only when ordered or uncovered; attempt to hide as many documents as possible under exaggerated and improper claims of privilege; and do everything to try and run out the clock.'' The Department of Justice is representing the Census Bureau, and the Commerce Department, which oversees the statistical agency, in the lawsuit. A hearing on the documents was scheduled for late Monday. In the same court filing, the Trump administration attorneys said they haven't violated any orders to produce documents, adding that any blame should be on the coalition's attorneys for making their requests too broad.

In some cases, the government attorneys are still working to provide the requested information. In other cases, the requests would require the Census Bureau to write new code in order to make data inquiries that would be “unduly burdensome as the employees needed to search for this data are the same employees who are trying to finish the census,'' the government attorneys said. The lawsuit in federal court in San Jose, California, was originally brought by the coalition to stop the census from ending early out of concerns that a shortened head count would cause minority communities to be undercounted.