High Court Hastens Utah Census Case

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Thursday to speed up consideration of Utah’s challenge to the counting method used in the 2000 census, scheduling oral arguments for March 27.

Utah, seeking to take one congressional seat from North Carolina, is challenging the U.S. Census Bureau’s use of statistical “imputation” to come up with the number of residents at addresses where no one could be contacted.

In its order, the court granted the state’s motion to set an expedited schedule for considering the case, ensuring that it would be heard during the current term, which ends in June.

When census workers were unable to count people in a household despite repeated visits, the Census Bureau assumed through imputation that the same number of people lived there as in a neighboring dwelling.

In the 2000 census, imputation accounted for less than 0.5% of the total U.S. population. If it had not been used, Utah would have one more seat in the House and North Carolina would have one less.

Utah argued that the use of the process violated the Census Act prohibition on statistical sampling and the constitutional requirement on an actual enumeration.

The Justice Department disagreed, saying use of imputation is not a form of sampling within the meaning of the law and argued that Utah’s case “lacks merit.”

Utah sued, but a three-judge federal panel in November dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that imputation is reasonably consistent with the findings of actual enumeration.

In November, the Supreme Court rejected a separate argument by Utah that Mormon missionaries who were out of the country in April 2000 should have been included in the count.