The U.S. Census Bureau said Friday it won't be delivering data used for redrawing state and local legislative districts until the end of September, causing headaches for state lawmakers and redistricting commissions facing deadlines to redraw state legislative districts this year.

Officials at the statistical agency blamed operational delays during the 2020 census caused by the pandemic.

“The biggest reason? COVID-19. It's something beyond the Census Bureau's control,” said Kathleen Styles, the Census Bureau's chief of Decennial Communications and Stakeholder Relations, during a telephone call with reporters.

Styles had previously said the redistricting data would be available no earlier than the end of July because of delays caused by the virus. Before the pandemic, the deadline for finishing the redistricting data had been March 31.

The redistricting data includes counts of population by race, Hispanic origin, voting age and housing occupancy status at geographic levels as small as neighborhoods. Unlike in previous decades when the data were released to states on a flow basis, the 2020 redistricting data will be made available to the states all at once, according to the Census Bureau.

The delayed release creates a chain reaction in the political world. Several states will not get the data until after their legal deadlines for drawing new districts, requiring them to either rewrite laws or ask courts to allow them a free pass due to the delay. Candidates may not know yet whether they will live in the district they want to run in by the filing deadline. In some cases, if fights over new maps drag into the New Year, primaries may have to be delayed.

In the end, though, experts said the elections will proceed as normal in November 2022. The biggest impact will be to compress the window during which lawyers can challenge bad maps in court.

“It makes it significantly more likely that courts will bump up against election deadlines,” said Michael Li of the Brennan Center for Justice.

Census Bureau officials are aware of the deadlines facing lawmakers and redistricting commissions across the U.S., but “we have a strong schedule that reflects the time we need,” said James Whitehorne, chief of the Redistricting and Voting Rights Data office at the bureau.

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell slightly last week to 793,000, evidence that job cuts remain high despite a substantial decline in new confirmed viral infections.Last week's total declined from 812,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That figure was revised higher from the previously reported 779,000. The numbers point to a still-elevated number of layoffs. Before the virus erupted in the United States in March, weekly applications for jobless aid had never topped 700,000, even during the Great Recession.