A federal judge has started contempt proceedings against Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for his failure to follow an order to continue the collection of census information until next month.

According to The Hill:

A federal judge has begun contempt proceedings against Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross over his allegedly defying her order to continue census collection until the end of next month.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, appointed by former President Obama, initiated contempt of court proceedings during a Tuesday hearing, accusing the Department of Commerce of disobeying her previous order, Bloomberg News reported. She set a hearing for the proceedings for Friday.

The launch of contempt proceedings came after the U.S. Census Bureau and Ross announced on Twitter that Oct. 5 was the “target date” to finish self-response and field data collection operations on the 2020 census.

Koh said that Ross and the department were “doing exactly” what she ordered officials not to do last week, when she issued a preliminary injunction preventing the administration from ending the census before the scheduled Oct. 31.

Ross also wants to report the data of the census to the President by December 31st which is earlier than the April 2021 target date.