An Alabama federal district court granted a Mar 8 request for a 3-judge panel by plaintiffs to consider the differential privacy claims raised in a lawsuit filed by the state of Alabama against the U.S. Census Bureau. Federal statute allows a plaintiff to request a 3-judge panel to consider any case involving the use of any statistical method used in the decennial U.S. census in possible violation of the Constitution or other provision of law. This development ensures a fast-track to the U.S. Supreme Court should one of the parties appeal the panel’s decision. Read the court’s order.
In granting the request, the court likened this case to a previous case involving what it described as a similiarly controversial statistical method used by the Census Bureau:
“The nature of the Plaintiffs’ allegations liken the posture of this case to the
legal challenge brought against the Bureau for its use of tabulations like “hotdeck
imputation” where the primary legal issue concerned whether hotdeck imputation
constituted a type of statistical sampling. See Utah v. Evans, 536 U.S. 452 (2002).
In that case, the district court judge requested the designation of a three-judge panel;
this Court must accordingly request the same.”
The court also noted that the 3-judge panel may also choose to take up the additional claim(s) in the lawsuit regarding delayed census data delivery.
