Alabama filed suit on Wednesday against the U.S. Census Bureau, arguing that a new data protection method applied to this year’s census will produce “manipulated redistricting data,” violating federal law.
The complaint also challenges the bureau for committing to deliver redistricting data to states by the end of September, well past the March 31 deadline provided by law.
Differential privacy, the data protection method in question, has not been used in previous censuses. The National Conference of State Legislatures, or NCSL, describes its function as: “With differential privacy, the bureau has stated that the total population in each state will be ‘as enumerated,’ but that all other levels of geography — including congressional districts down to townships and census blocks — could have some variance from the raw data. This is referred to by the Census Bureau as ‘injecting noise’ into the data. No ‘noise’ would be injected into the state total population, but in smaller geographic units, ‘noise’ can be expected.”
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The suit, signed on to by Republican U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt and two private citizens, argued that the plaintiffs “and others across the State face the very real risk that their voting power will be diluted when the Bureau purposefully misreports the number of people living in different areas of the State.”
Michael Thieme, the assistant director for decennial census programs at the Census Bureau, has expressed confidence in differential privacy.
“We are working with scientists who really know what they are doing,” Thieme said on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
The bureau announced in February that it expects to make redistricting data available to the states and public by Sept. 30.
“If this were a typical decade, we would be on the verge of delivering the first round of redistricting data from the 2020 Census,” James Whitehorne, chief of the redistricting and voting rights data office, wrote in a blog post.
Alabama argues that “the Bureau has no authority to grant itself this sizeable extension and deprive Alabama of information to which it is entitled.”
The plaintiffs are asking a three-judge panel to restrict the use of differential privacy and to require the bureau to deliver redistricting data by March 31. Ohio also filed suit against the bureau in February, asking a judge to restore the same deadline.
Timely data is important because states need time to redraw districts before their next elections and to meet their own legal deadlines. “For some states, the requested delays would be uncomfortable; for others, delays would mean deadlines that are established in state constitutions or statutes would be impossible to meet,” the NCSL says.
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The Census Bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
