Clinton Appeals to High Court to Allow Census Sampling

The Clinton administration sought the Supreme Court’s permission Friday to use statistical sampling for the 2000 census, asking the justices to referee a fight over federal money and political power.

In an appeal likely to be acted on this fall, Justice Department lawyers attacked a lower court’s ruling that threw out the Census Bureau’s plan to use a sampling method designed to correct the undercounting of minorities.

The Constitution requires a national census every 10 years based on “actual enumeration”--a one-by-one count the Founding Fathers envisioned. In striking down the Census Bureau’s plan last week, a three-judge federal panel avoided ruling on its constitutionality. Instead, the lower court said its use would violate a federal law.

The stakes are enormous. Billions of dollars in federal funds are allocated on the basis of how many people live in each state and city, and shifts in population can lead to the redrawing of House districts. A boost in the count of minorities is viewed as helping Democrats.

Republicans who oppose the Census Bureau’s sampling plan have promised that if sampling is prohibited they will come up with enough money to ensure that every American is counted.

The appeal filed Friday contends that the three-judge panel misinterpreted the Census Act. That federal law authorizes the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, “to use sampling procedures and special surveys in conducting the decennial census of population,” the administration lawyers said.

The administration also argued that the use of sampling would be constitutional. The Constitution “does not require that the relevant numbers be determined through any particular methodology,” the appeal said.

And it added that the House of Representatives should not have been allowed to challenge the Census Bureau’s planned count.

After a lengthy political struggle last year, the White House and House Republicans agreed that the Census Bureau could make preparations for the use of sampling in 2000 but that the GOP would challenge the method in court.