EXCLUSIVE — America First Legal added Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) on Wednesday as a plaintiff to a lawsuit against the U.S. Census Bureau in an amended complaint.
The lawsuit, filed by the University of South Florida College Republicans and Pinellas County Young Republicans with the Middle Judicial District of Florida, Tampa Division, in September, alleges that the bureau’s use of statistical manipulation fabricated millions of residents and unfairly distorted congressional representation, as well as Electoral College votes.
The plaintiffs argued that the bureau‘s move violated the Constitution‘s actual enumeration clause and federal law. They requested a three-judge panel to review their claims.
“The integrity of our electoral system begins with an accurate census,” Donalds said, affirming that Florida voters “should not lose their rightful representation due to bureaucratic manipulation” in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner.
“[The lawsuit] underscores the need for accuracy and transparency in the Census Bureau’s process — representation must be based on real counts of real Americans,” America First Legal President Gene Hamilton said in the joint statement.
The lawsuit says the government agency invoked the group quarters imputation and differential privacy, computation methods that take residents into account with limited knowledge, in college dormitories or residential areas during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most students were not present.
The group quarters imputation allowed the agency to count “phantom people” and “distort population figures,” as mentioned in the lawsuit, by drawing an estimate of the number of college students at the time through a comparison of previous populations in the same place.
UNHAPPY STATES CONSIDER CENSUS LAWSUIT TO STOP NEW POLITICAL MAP
Federal law prohibits the use of statistical sampling for congressional apportionment, as stated in 13 U.S.C. § 195, and the use of different census dates for populations of people sought to be estimated through the group quarters method, as mentioned in 13 U.S.C. § 141.
If the claims were to be upheld in court, the three-judge panel could rule that the agency is guilty of violating the Constitution and federal law on multiple counts, mandate the agency to create a new 2020 census report free of the use of the statistical methods, and possibly issue an injunction against the agency prohibiting it from using the statistical methods in question in its 2030 census report.