A federal judge has issued an injunction preventing the Census Bureau from terminating operations while a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s attempt to sabotage the decennial count.

This is not a victory, it’s just a hold until the suit can progress, but it does imply that there is a reasonable chance of their prevailing:

A federal judge has ordered the US Census Bureau for the time being to stop following a plan that would have had it winding down operations in order to finish the 2020 census at the end of September.

The federal judge in San Jose issued a temporary restraining order on Saturday against the Census Bureau and the Commerce Department, which oversees the agency.

The order stops the Census Bureau from winding down operations until a court hearing is held on 17 September. The once-a-decade head count of every US resident helps determine how $1.5tn in federal funding is distributed and how many congressional seats each state gets in a process known as apportionment.

The temporary restraining order was requested by a coalition of cities, counties and civil rights groups that had sued the Census Bureau, demanding it restore its previous plan for finishing the census at the end of October, instead of using a revised plan to end operations at the end of September. The coalition had argued the earlier deadline would cause the Census Bureau to overlook minority communities in the census, leading to an inaccurate count.

The September hearing should be interesting.