Summary
- Two young Republican groups challenge 2020 census results.
- Lawsuit filed in Florida federal court targeting population data.
- Challenge aims to influence congressional seat apportionment.
Targeting the U.S. population statistics that decide how many congressional seats each state receives, the lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Florida. Prior to next year's elections, Republican-led state legislatures have been under pressure from President Donald Trump to redistrict their congressional districts in favor of the GOP.
Jeffrey Wice, a specialist in redistricting and the census, stated on Friday that the Florida lawsuit was a component of that plan to maintain Republican control of the House of Representatives.
“Clearly, this is part of that agenda to use the courts and state legislatures in any way they can to retain congressional power,”
said Wice, a New York Law School professor.
“It’s not a very great step forward.”
As required for cases involving the process of allocating congressional seats among the states, known as apportionment, the University of South Florida College Republicans, the Pinellas County Young Republicans, and two other individuals filed a request on Tuesday for a three-judge panel to hear their lawsuit.
In recent months, some Republican elected leaders have called for a mid-decade revision to the once-every-decade head count of all Americans. Trump gave the Commerce Department instructions in August to have the Census Bureau begin preparing a new census that would not include illegal immigrants.
Recently, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis accused the Census Bureau of "shortchanging" Florida, claiming that the third most populous state in the union should have an additional seat in the House. Following the 2020 census, Florida acquired one more House seat, bringing its total to 28. In contrast to other states, Florida hardly offered any tools to encourage citizens to complete census forms, and DeSantis dismissed early proposals to establish a state committee to encourage participation.
What specific statistical methods are being challenged in the lawsuit?
The Census Bureau employs this approach to safeguard privacy of personal data by introducing a "noise" of random variation into the datasets. The purpose of the noise is to avoid discovering an identity of an individual. Critics contend it results in more inaccuracies in the population counts which could impact their use for purposes such as apportionment and redistricting.
This technique is utilized for counting individuals in "group quarters" (e.g., college dorms, nursing homes), or where the census taker was not able to get direct answers. Imputation furthers the process of name confirmation to fill in missing data points using statistical models and adjacent data points.
The lawsuit contends imputation is an illegal type of sampling and prohibitive for purposes of congressional apportionment per federal law.