The Supreme Court and the Census (2 of 3)

As noted by Nathaniel Persily, “In the Constitution itself, the census is ‘about’ representation, money, and race, so we should not be surprised to learn that courtroom controversies over the census have persisted with respect to these three themes.” For a brief review of the history of census litigation and controversy see Swanson and Walashek. This post covers two recent Supreme Court cases that illustrate the political significance of the decennial census.

Context

A significant issue in court cases deals with how the census should count. The issue of how to count derives in part from the Census Bureau’s post-census estimation of the accuracy of the decennial enumeration.… Read the rest