September 11, 1998
By Richard Carelli
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration wants the Supreme Court to put back on track its plan to use statistical sampling for the 2000 census, a high-stakes plan derailed by a lower court last week.
Justice Department lawyers asked the nation's highest court Friday to overturn a three-judge panel's invalidation of the Census Bureau's planned use of a sampling method designed to correct undercounting of minorities.
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 oppose the sampling method, and the GOP-led House sued to stop its use.
The court is likely to act on the administration's appeal this fall. If it grants review, a decision would be issued next year.
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 appeal filed Friday contended 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.
The House of Representatives should not have been allowed to challenge the Census Bureau's planned count, according to the appeal.
After a lengthy political struggle last year, the White House and House Republicans agreed that the Census Bureau could make preparations this year for the use of sampling in 2000 but that Republicans would also challenge the method in court.
Republicans have promised that if sampling is prohibited, they will come up with more money to ensure that every American is counted.
When the lower court threw out the sampling plan on Aug. 24, House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri said ``nearly 6 million people will disappear for all practical purposes when a host of government decisions based on the 2000 census are made.''
The Census Bureau estimates that 4 million people were overlooked in the 1990 census. Under its plan for 2000, a traditional head count by mailings and door-to-door surveys would be used for 90 percent of the population. Sampling would be used in part to estimate the remaining 10 percent, often minorities and people in inner cities who tend to be undercounted.
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