Gingrich Files Suit to Block Sampling Method in Census

Moving to block a counting method that Republican leaders fear could threaten their political power, House Speaker Newt Gingrich filed a lawsuit Friday to prohibit statistical sampling in the 2000 census.

The lawsuit is the second filed this month in federal District Court here that would thwart the Clinton administration’s plan to use sampling to compensate for the undercount in the 1990 census, when an estimated 1.6% of the nation’s population was missed.

With sampling, the Census Bureau would use statistical projection to estimate those portions of the population that are hardest to count, such as people living in poor neighborhoods.

Gingrich’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of the House of Representatives, asks for an injunction to stop sampling on the grounds that it violates the Constitution’s mandate that every resident be counted.

“For 200 years, the government officials who have taken the decennial census . . . have conducted an actual enumeration of the populace by attempting to count all the people,” the suit says. “[The Clinton administration] now seeks to abandon that course.”

Although the legal arguments are purely constitutional, Democrats accuse the GOP of putting politics before an accurate census. The undercounted are largely minorities and urban poor, who tend to be Democratic, and counting them could jeopardize the GOP voting base when congressional districts--as well as state legislative districts--are redrawn using the 2000 census results.

Republican leaders, including Gingrich, have focused in private on these political concerns in criticizing sampling, several party sources have said.

The outcome of the sampling battle is of no small matter to California. The state lost about $500 million in federal funds allotted on the basis of census results and one congressional seat, because about 1 million of its residents were missed in the 1990 count. Another undercount in 2000 could be even more costly for the state, sampling advocates contend.

Los Angeles city officials also strongly support sampling out of concern that, without it, the city will not receive its fair share of federal funds.

House Republican leaders retained the Los Angeles-based firm of Latham & Watkins to do battle against the counting method. The firm has been among the most prominent lobbying organizations at City Hall, representing the L.A. Olympics organizing committee in 1984 and acting as special counsel to Rebuild L.A. after the 1992 riots.

Gingrich’s suit comes one week after the Southeastern Legal Foundation of Atlanta, a conservative public interest law firm, sued the Clinton administration on the same grounds.

The Gingrich lawsuit was filed late Friday, and neither he nor anyone from his office could be reached for comment.

Neither lawsuit attempts to disrupt census dress rehearsals scheduled for late April in three areas--Sacramento, an 11-county area of South Carolina and a Wisconsin Indian reservation. Sampling is to be tried only in Sacramento, then compared to the results gathered from traditional counting methods in the other areas.