Supreme Court to take up census dispute today

The U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments today in a case that will decide whether North Carolina will have 12 or 13 congressional districts for the next decade.

According to the 2000 census, North Carolina's population increased enough during the 1990s for the state to be entitled to an additional representative in Congress. But the state of Utah--which narrowly missed the chance to obtain an extra seat itself--filed suit challenging the U.S. Census Bureau's methodology. That means North Carolina could lose the seat to Utah.

At issue is the method of "imputation"--predicting the number of people who live in a household that does not return its census form after multiple requests, based on the number of people who live in nearby households, explained Thad Beyle, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Attorneys for Utah are arguing that imputation is unconstitutional, allowing people who do not exist to be counted in a state's census. They are drawing parallels to the method of statistical sampling, another process that predicts the existence of people not actually counted by the census. The Supreme Court ruled against statistical sampling in 1999--although imputed data accounted for less than one-half of a percent of the U.S. population, much less than statistical sampling could.

Earlier, a federal three-judge panel ruled in favor of the census bureau, but Utah appealed that decision. If the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Utah, North Carolina could lose its 13th congressional district, which would, in turn, throw a wrench in the state's election plans.

"The state Legislature would have to come back into session and redraw those congressional districts," Beyle said, explaining that this uncertainty was part of the reason the state Board of Elections decided to postpone the primary elections indefinitely.

Walter Dellinger, a Duke law professor who served as solicitor general for the Clinton administration, will argue the federal government's case before the court today.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.