Court Opinion

ID: 9771045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:29:43.592914+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:24.053887
License: Public Domain

BENSON, District Judge,
Concurring.
I concur in Sections I and II of the majority opinion and in the result reached *1302in Section III. I write separately because in my view the discussion in Section III goes too far. The only finding necessary to our decision is that the Census Bureau had a rational basis for the manner in which it carried out the 2000 Census, and therefore did not abuse its discretion in deciding not to count any overseas Americans beyond U.S. government employees. That is all we need say, and any analysis should be limited to that issue. In dicta, however, the majority opinion reaches issues removed from and unnecessary to our holding.
In Section III, the majority unnecessarily discusses possible problems with the remedies sought by the plaintiffs. I see no reason to express an opinion on these remedies because we have already determined there is no liability. For example, the majority suggests that there may be something wrong with the inclusion of LDS missionaries in the census because Utah has more LDS missionaries serving abroad than other states. This dictum is unnecessary to our decision. Furthermore, I disagree with it. If for some reason in the future the census takers determine to include overseas LDS missionaries, which in their discretion they may choose to do for a variety of reasons, I see nothing constitutionally or otherwise impermissible in doing so merely because a large number of them are from Utah. In this regard, I find it significant that the inclusion of overseas government employees does not precisely mirror the domestic count for apportionment purposes. Indeed, the only reason the plaintiffs filed Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788, 112 S.Ct. 2767, 120 L.Ed.2d 636 (1992), was because the inclusion of military personnel favored Washington over Massachusetts, with the former gaining a congressional seat and the latter losing one for that reason alone. Yet the United States Supreme Court found no error in that practice. Similarly, I see no legal significance in the fact that the possible inclusion of overseas LDS missionaries in future censuses may give a proportionately greater count to Utah than to other states.