9 Oct
2002
9 Oct
'02
4:32 p.m.
thanks chuck. this seems to follow up on similar cases back last march
as reported by the census 2000 initiative group.
"Legal update: On March 18, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a
federal district court in Los Angeles to reconsider its ruling in favor
of Democratic lawmakers who sued under an obscure 1928 statute (dubbed
"the seven-Member rule) for access to the A.C.E.-adjusted Census 2000
numbers. In papers asking the court to reverse its earlier decision, the
USDOJ said the issue is a political dispute between the legislative and
executive branches over access to information that did not belong in the
courts. Sixteen members of the House Committee on Government Reform, led
by senior Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA), took the Commerce Department
(the Census Bureau's parent agency) to court last spring, after the
department refused to release the adjusted data. In January, Judge
Lourdes language (of the statute) mandates that the secretary release
the adjusted data." Late last month, the judge denied the Justice
Department's request to vacate the original order; the government is now
considering an appeal to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals."
http://www.census2000.org/news/2002/Apr22.html
do we know anyone that actually has seen this data locally and is
working with it in any fashion?
Census Told to Show Adjusted Count
Wed Oct 9, 4:08 PM ET By WILLIAM McCALL, Associated Press
Writer PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled
that the Census Bureau must release its statistically adjusted count
for every state, county and neighborhood in the United
States. Billions of dollars in government funding that is distributed
according to population is potentially at stake in the dispute. The
Census Bureau has refused to release the adjusted numbers, contending
the figures are unreliable and would cause political battles over
federal funding. The bureau has instead been releasing only the
population counts arrived at through census takers and
questionnaires. But a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals said that the public is entitled to see the adjusted
figures, too, under federal open-government law. Congressional
Democrats, minorities and big-city mayors have been pressing for the
release of the numbers on the suspicion that large numbers of people
were missed and that their districts were shortchanged federal, state
and local funding because of it. A 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling
bars the use of adjusted numbers for reapportioning congressional
seats,
but such data can be used for local districting purposes and for
distributing federal grants. A spokesman for the Justice Department,
which represented the Census Bureau, did not immediately return a
call for comment. After census takers and census questionnaires were
sent out in 2000, the Census Bureau used mathematical formulas to
estimate how many minorities, renters and other groups might have been
missed in inner cities, rural areas and other places. Those figures
are often called the "undercount." Oregon state Sens. Susan Castillo
and Margaret Carter, both Democrats, filed a Freedom of Information
Act request to see the adjusted population figures. But the Census
Bureau asked for an exception to the law. In its ruling Wednesday,
the appeals court upheld U.S. District Judge James A. Redden of
Portland, who last November ordered the government to release the
undercount. The case marked the first time a federal judge had ruled
that the adjusted 2000 counts for the entire country must be released.