Unhappy states consider census lawsuit to stop new political map

Population figures that decide how many congressional seats each state gets left many suspicious of the federal agency’s final report. Now some state leaders plan to sue over it.

Both parties have grievances with the Census numbers released on April 26, which found the United States to have just over 331 million people. New York, a strongly Democratic state, is set to lose a House seat, shrinking its total from 27 lawmakers in the chamber to 26. Most frustrating for New Yorkers is that the Empire State lost out on getting to keep all of its House seats by just 89 votes. Minnesota ended up the beneficiary, as it gets to keep all eight of its House seats.

Republicans, meanwhile, were disappointed that Texas only picked up two House seats due to rapid population growth and that Florida only added one. State governments in both are controlled by Republicans, and each expected to pick up an additional House seat, important elements in the party’s bid for winning a majority in the chamber in the 2022 midterm elections.

House Republicans on the Oversight Committee questioned Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in a recent letter, asking why “apportionment population results released by the Census Bureau are strikingly different from the population evaluation estimates released just months ago on December 22, 2020.”

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“Several liberal states with sanctuary policies may have lost more congressional seats if illegal immigrants had not been included in the apportionment base,” the Republican lawmakers wrote. “This trend calls into question whether there was any political interference with the apportionment results released by the Census Bureau.”

Both sides are now eyeing litigation to reverse the Census results. New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is considering a lawsuit against the federal government over that one congressional seat the state lost by 89 residents.

“Do I think it was accurate to within 89? No.” Cuomo told reporters at a press conference. “And we’re looking at legal options. Because when you’re talking about 89. That could be a minor mistake in counting.”

Cuomo said he ordered New York Attorney General Letitia James to see if legal grounds existed for a lawsuit.

The fight to make any massive permanent changes is an uphill battle. In 2011, New York City argued the census left out tens of thousands of residents living in the outer boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn as a result of the housing units being listed as vacant. The Census Bureau refused to change the city’s population count.

States are also concerned about the Census Bureau’s methodology with its number count. A lawsuit filed by the state of Alabama, with the backing of 16 states, one month ago, challenges the Census Bureau’s current counting method known as “differential privacy.”

The lawsuit asks whether the process upholds federal legal requirements of keeping personal information private for people who participated in the 2020 census while still making sure the numbers are accurate to redraw the congressional and legislative districts.

The states supporting Alabama’s lawsuit are Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. Maine and New Mexico are the only states in the group with Democratic attorneys general.

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“Because differential privacy creates false information — by design — it prevents the states from accessing municipal-level information crucial to performing this essential government functions,” the 16 states said. “And the distorting impact of differential privacy will likely fall hardest on some of the most vulnerable populations—rural areas and minority racial groups.”

The lawsuit also challenges the Census Bureau’s decision to delay the release of redistricting data from March 31 to August at the earliest, but the Bureau says the deadline was pushed back because of the pandemic. That dataset is expected to be released later this month.

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