Syllabus | Opinion [ Breyer ] | Dissent [ Scalia ] | Other [ OConnor ] | Other [ Opinion of Thomas ] |
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The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337.
UTAH et al. v. EVANS, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, et al.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF UTAH
The Census Bureau derives most census information from forms it mails to a nationwide list of addresses. If no one replies to a particular form or the information supplied is confusing, contradictory, or incomplete, the Bureau follows up with visits by its field personnel. Occasionally, despite the visits, the Bureau may still have conflicting indications about, e.g., whether a listed address is a housing unit, office building, or vacant lot, whether a residence is vacant or occupied, or the number of persons in a unit. The Bureau may then use a methodology called imputation, by which it infers that the address or unit about which it is uncertain has the same population characteristics as those of its geographically closest neighbor of the same type (i.e., apartment or single-family dwelling) that did not return a form. In the year 2000 census, the Bureau used hot-deck imputation to increase the total population count by about 0.4%. But because this small percentage was spread unevenly across the country, it made a difference in the apportionment of congressional Representatives. In particular, imputation increased North Carolinas population by 0.4% while increasing Utahs by only 0.2%, so that North Carolina will receive one more Representative and Utah one less than if the Bureau had simply filled relevant informational gaps by counting the related number of individuals as zero. Utah brought this suit against respondents, the officials charged with conducting the census, claiming that the Bureaus use of hot-deck imputation violates 13 U.S. C. §195, which prohibits use of the statistical method known as sampling,
Held:
1. The Court rejects North Carolinas argument that Utah lacks standing because this action is not a Case or Controversy, Art. III, §2, in that the federal courts do not have the power to redress the injury that respondents allegedly caused Utah, e.g., Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561. Because there is no significant difference between Utah and the plaintiff in Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788, in which the Court rejected a similar standing argument, North Carolina must convince the Court that it should reconsider Franklin. It has not done so. It argues that ordering respondents to recalculate the census numbers and recertify the official result cannot help Utah because North Carolina is entitled to the number of Representatives already certified to it under the statutes that require a decennial census, 13 U.S.C. § 141(a); mandate that the results be reported to the President, 141(b); obligate the President to send Congress a statement showing the number of Representatives to which each State is entitled by the census data, 2 U.S. C. §2a(a); and specify that the House must then send each State a certificate of the number of Representatives to which it is entitled. The statutes also say that once all that is done, each State shall be entitled to the number of Representatives the certificate specifies. §2a(b). Unlike North Carolina, the Court does not read these statutes as absolutely barring a certificates revision in all cases. The statutes do not expressly address what is to occur in the case of a serious mistakesay, a clerical, mathematical, or calculation error in census data or in its transposition. Guided by Franklin, which found standing despite §2as presence, the Court reads the statute as permitting certificate revision in such cases of error, including cases of court-determined legal error leading to a court-required revision of the underlying census report. So read, the statute poses no legal bar to redress. Nor does Pub. L. 105119, Title II, §209(b), 111 Stat. 2481, which entitles [a]ny person aggrieved by the use of any [unlawful] statistical method to bring a civil action for declaratory or injunctive relief against the use of such method. Despite North Carolinas argument that this statue implicitly forbids a suit after the census conclusion, the statute does not say that and does not explain why Congress would wish to deprive of its day in court a State that did not learn of a counting methods representational consequences until after the census completionand hence had little, if any, incentive to bring a precensus action. The Court reads limitations on its jurisdiction narrowly, see, e.g., Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592, 603, and will not read into a statute an unexpressed congressional intent to bar jurisdiction the Court has previously exercised, e.g., Franklin, supra. Because neither statute poses an absolute legal barrier to relief, it is likely that Utahs victory here would bring about the ultimate relief it seeks. See id., at 803. Thus, Utah has standing. Pp. 49.
2. The Bureaus use of hot-deck imputation does not violate 13 U.S.C. § 195 which authorize[s] the use of the statistical method known as sampling,
3. The Bureaus use of hot-deck imputation does not violate the Census Clause, which requires the actual Enumeration of each States population within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress , in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. Utah argues that the words actual Enumeration require the Census Bureau to seek out each individual and prohibit it from relying on imputation, but the Constitutions text does not make the distinction that Utah seeks to draw. Rather, it uses a general word, enumeration, that refers to a counting process without describing the counts methodological details. The textual word actual refers in context to the enumeration that would be used for apportioning the Third Congress, succinctly clarifying the fact that the constitutionally described basis for apportionment would not apply to the First and Second Congresses. The final part of the sentence says that the actual Enumeration shall take place in such Manner as Congress itself shall by Law direct, thereby suggesting the breadth of congressional methodological authority, rather than its limitation. See, e.g., Wisconsin v. City of New York, 517 U.S. 1, 19. This understanding of the text is supported by the history of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which demonstrates that actual Enumeration does not limit census methodology as Utah proposes, but was intended to distinguish the census from the apportionment process for the First Congress, which was based on conjecture rather than a deliberately taken count. Further support is added by contemporaneous general usage, as exemplified by late-18th-century dictionaries defining enumeration simply as an act of numbering or counting over, without reference to counting methodology, and by contemporaneous legal documents, in which enumeration does not require contact between a census taker and each enumerated individual, but is used almost interchangeably with the phrase cause the number of the inhabitants to be taken. Indeed, the Bureaus imputation method is similar in principle to other efforts used since 1800 to determine the number of missing persons, including asking heads of households, neighbors, landlords, postal workers, or other proxies about the number of inhabitants in a particular place. Nor can Utah draw support from the Census Clauses basic purposes: to use population rather than wealth to determine representation, to tie taxes and representation together, to insist upon periodic recounts of the population, and to take from the States the power to determine the manner of conducting the census. Those matters of general principle do not directly help determine the issue of detailed methodology before the Court. Nonetheless, certain basic constitutional choices may prove relevant. The decisions, for example, to use population rather than wealth, to tie taxes and representation together, to insist upon periodic recounts, and to take from the States the power to determine methodology all suggest a strong constitutional interest in accuracy. And an interest in accuracy here favors the Bureau, which uses imputation as a last resort after other methods have failed. The Court need not decide here the precise methodological limits foreseen by the Census Clause. It need say only that in this instance, where all efforts have been made to reach every household, where the methods used consist not of statistical sampling but of inference, where that inference involves a tiny percent of the population, where the alternative is to make a far less accurate assessment of the population, and where consequently manipulation of the method is highly unlikely, those limits are not exceeded. Pp. 1824.
182 F. Supp. 2d 1165, affirmed.
Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J. and Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined, and in which OConnor, J., joined as to Parts I and II. OConnor, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Kennedy, J., joined. Scalia, J., filed a dissenting opinion.