With less than a week left to respond to the 2020 census, Marin County has signed on to a lawsuit brought by a coalition of counties and cities against the Census Bureau, challenging its decision to rush the complete count of the population. Last month, the bureau abandoned Covid-19 plans to end data collection on Oct. 31, moving the deadline to Sept. 30. The bureau said it needed to meet a legal deadline to cease operations by year’s end, but the lawsuit argues a truncated timeline will lead to an inaccurate count—creating inequal representation, underfunded safety-net services and ineffective emergency response—and asks the court to require the bureau to keep its former deadline. West Marin, a hard-to-count area, is lagging below the national response rate of 66 percent. Bolinas and Stinson Beach are at 35 percent, the rest of the coast at 42 percent, and the San Geronimo Valley at 62 percent.