On Monday, 16 states joined Alabama in deriding the U.S. Census Bureau’s newly adapted data privacy policy (aka differential privacy) which uses statistical algorithms to distort raw census data before it is released to states and the public. The states who jointly filed as amici in Alabama’s lawsuit against the Bureau are Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Utah.
The amicus brief filed on behalf of these states lists three “major harms” caused by differential privacy. 1) local redistricting cannot be conducted with any reasonable accuracy; 2) the inaccurate data that the algorithm produces would negatively affect longitudinal studies; and 3) state legislative and congressional redistricting cannot be conducted in a way to satisfy existing constitutional requirements such as equal population and Voting Rights Act compliance.
Amicus briefs were also filed by Republican legislative leaders in Pennsylvania and a professor at the University of Arizona. Access all of the case documents in the case library.
