Census Urges Court to Stem Potential Redistricting Data Suits

The Census Bureau urged a federal court on Tuesday to block the appointment of a judges panel in an Alabama redistricting lawsuit in hopes that thwarting its fast track to the U.S. Supreme Court would discourage similar litigation.

The bureau’s brief argued that assigning a three-judge court to hear the Alabama attorney general’s suit over new national redistricting data-fuzzing processes would open up the bureau to other challenges Congress didn’t intend for the Supreme Court docket.

Alabama claims that the bureau’s new data technique, called differential privacy, is delaying the release of data for months and endangering states’ abilities to ...