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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2002

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to consider whether a key U.S. Census Bureau counting method is unconstitutional.

Utah is challenging whether "imputation" is valid under the Constitution and federal law. The method is used when census takers can't get information about a particular household so they "impute" its characteristics based on similar households.

Imputation could be ruled illegal because it could be interpreted as sampling, which the Supreme Court forbids under the Census Act of 1957. It could also violate a constitutional requirement to "count" every person to draw Congressional districts.

Utah, which claims that it lost a Congressional seat to North Carolina as a result of imputation used for the Census 2000, previously lost the case in federal court.

Get the Story:
Census Suit Gets Day in Court (The Salt Lake Tribune 1/23)
High Court to Consider Census Suit (The Washington Post 1/23)
Justices to Hear Utah's Challenge to Procedure in 2000 Census (The New York Times 1/23)
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