Editorial: Utah gets raw deal from Census Bureau

Friday, March 9, 2001 | 8:53 a.m.

Utah has a legitimate beef with the Census Bureau, charging that the federal government's refusal to count the state's 11,000 Mormon missionaries living abroad is wrong. The Census Bureau's decision meant that Utah came up 856 people short of qualifying for a fourth congressional seat. That seat instead will go to North Carolina. So Utah is filing a lawsuit seeking to reverse the Census Bureau's determination.

It's not as if the government refuses to count all Americans living abroad. For instance, states who have residents serving in the military or in the U.S. Foreign Service get them counted. But if you're working in the private sector, or are temporarily abroad for religious or humanitarian purposes, you won't be counted. "It's a clear, clear treatment of one group differently from another," Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt recently told the Los Angeles Times in a story about the dispute. "I think that falls under equal protection." Not only does the federal government's refusal to count missionaries discriminate against religious groups, but the policy also stands on its head the Census Bureau's stated intention of counting every American.

In addition to feeling a general sense of dismay over this discriminatory decision, Nevadans on another level also can have empathy for Utah because this state, too, wasn't treated well. Nevada, after all, itself was undercounted since the Census Bureau decided not to use scientific sampling to account for all the minorities and newcomers that the initial head count certainly missed. This is a heck of a way to run a railroad.