The state of Alabama on Thursday asked to dismiss its lawsuit challenging the U.S. Census Bureau’s use of a controversial statistical method aimed at keeping people’s data private in the numbers used for redrawing congressional and legislative districts.
Alabama and three Alabama politicians had sued the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, in an effort to stop the statistical agency from using the method known as “differential privacy.” They also wanted to force the bureau to release the redistricting numbers earlier than planned. Normally, the data is released at the end of March, but the Census Bureau pushed the deadline to August because of delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Alabama originally claimed the delay was caused by the bureau’s attempt to implement differential privacy, which the state’s attorneys said would result in inaccurate redistricting numbers. A three-judge panel in June refused to stop the Census Bureau from using the statistical method. In July, Alabama and the Commerce Department asked that the lawsuit be put on hold so that the state could decide how to proceed after the redistricting data was released in mid-August.
“While we continue to believe that the Census Bureau’s production of intentionally skewed redistricting data half a year late was unlawful, dismissing the lawsuit now is in the state’s best interest to allow the Legislature to focus on redistricting based on the data it finally received,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Thursday in a statement.