This time, it's personal . . . or should be

March 26, 2002

ATLANTA/WASHINGTON, DC: The Southeastern Legal Foundation today expressed optimism that the U.S. Supreme Court will "further define the limits of a constitutional census-taking" when it hears arguments in the Utah v. Evans case tomorrow. At issue in Utah is whether a methodology known as "imputation," defined under the Census Bureau's Census 2000 Report as a form of statistical sampling, violates the "actual enumeration" provisions of federal law and the U.S. Constitution for congressional apportionment. At stake is a GOP-leaning U.S. House seat in Utah, which would become a Democratic-leaning U.S. House seat in North Carolina if the case is decided in favor of imputation.

SLF, which is participating in Utah as a friend of the court, won a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning the use of statistical sampling for purposes of determining the Census 2000 population count for congressional apportionment, Department of Commerce v. House of Representatives, Clinton, et al v. Glavin, et al, 525 U.S. 316 (1999). The high court ruled that statistical sampling violated federal law based on constitutional provisions mandating an "actual enumeration" by "counting the whole number of persons in each state" for purposes of determining congressional apportionment.

The methodology known as imputation, by which enumerators attribute people and their characteristics to a residence despite failing to identify any real people at that location after six attempts, accounted for 1.2 million people in the Census 2000. In its Census 2000 Report, the Census Bureau defines imputation under the heading "statistical sampling," which was banned for purposes of congressional apportionment.

"We believe the Utah case provides the high court with the opportunity to further define the contours of federal constitutional law on the critical question of how we count people to determine political representation," said Phil Kent, SLF President. "Imputation, just like its statistical sampling counterpart, undermines the integrity of the census counts by "accounting for" rather than simply "counting" actual people. This must not stand."

"The results of Census 2000 are profound, due in part to the Census Bureau-acknowledged fact that the actual head count numbers were more accurate than the statistically sampled numbers," said Kent. "We are confident that the Justices who considered the potential scientific validity of sampling in 1999 will now question its validity in all forms -- including imputation -- in light of the accuracy evidence."

"The decennial census is a cornerstone of representative government, and it should be protected from the vague and subjective process that manipulates the actual head count," said Kent.

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