⁍ The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to wind down population counting for the 2020 U.S. census earlier than originally planned.

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⁍ The justices put on hold a lower court ruling that had ordered that the decennial population count be continued until Oct. 31.

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⁍ Civil rights groups were concerned about an undercount particularly of racial minorities.

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– Civil rights groups worried about an undercount in the 2020 US census scored a victory Tuesday when the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to speed up the population count. The justices put on hold a lower court ruling that had ordered the decennial population count be continued until Oct. 31. The Census Bureau on Aug. 3 announced that it would wind down data collection by Sept. 30, a month earlier than originally scheduled. The Supreme Court’s order was a loss for municipalities including Los Angeles, the counties that include Houston and Seattle, and civil rights groups including the National Urban League that sued seeking to get the later deadline reinstated, reports Reuters. The plaintiffs argued that the ‘rushed’ schedule would lead to inaccurate census results and ‘a massive undercount of the country’s communities of color.’ They said in an Oct. 10 filing that a ruling for the Trump administration would allow it ‘to stop the 2020 Census count, shut down field operations, fire hundreds of thousands of employees, and start processing data the very next day.’ Trump’s administration has said it changed the timeline in order to meet a Dec. 31 deadline set by statute for delivering census results to the president. US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif. has repeatedly ruled against the Census Bureau, saying the accelerated schedule would likely produce inaccurate numbers. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only justice who publicly dissented, said the Supreme Court’s decision would allow the Census Bureau to “sacrifice accuracy for expediency.”