Detroit sues Census Bureau again, accuses feds of undercounting

DETROIT — The city of Detroit filed another federal lawsuit Thursday against the U.S. Census Bureau and Commerce Department, accusing officials of undercounting residents, particularly Black and Hispanic citizens, through its "fundamentally flawed formula."

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, is the latest attempt by Mayor Mike Duggan's administration to challenge Census results that are used to draw congressional districts, determine state and federal representation and serve as a basis to allocate funding to states and localities.

The Census' April 2020 estimates counted 639,115 Detroiters and dropped nearly 3% to 620,376 in July 2022. It's a 15% decline from the 731,777 residents recorded in 2010. Estimates from 2023 release in May.

The city first challenged the Census Bureau in September 2022 on the previous two years of estimates. Thursday's lawsuit continues to allege that the Census Bureau is using one inflexible formula to estimate the population of all cities, based primarily on the number of housing units.

The most recent lawsuit disputes revised population numbers the Census Bureau provided to Detroit in February and continues to challenge the bureau's methodology on counting rehabbed and demolished properties. Duggan has previously maintained that his push to demolish vacant, blighted homes has incorrectly led to a loss of population in Census calculations.

The formula, according to Detroit, ignores the "fundamental truth about population estimates in America: the nature of housing units in older urban cities is dramatically different than the nature of housing units in newer, more affluent areas. Counting all cities the same way is inherently discriminatory."

The formula assumes that every demolition of a vacant, uninhabitable structure represents the loss of a household, ignoring families who renovate an uninhabitable house. It also does not include new housing units in its estimates, according to Detroit's recent filing.

"The combined impact of these policies guarantees that poor and minority communities like Detroit will be undercounted in the Census Bureau’s annual estimate every year," according to the lawsuit.

The city believes tens of thousands of Detroiters were excluded from the Census' 2021 and 2022 estimates. In August, the city challenged the previous estimates.

On Feb. 26, the Census Bureau responded to Detroit's administrative challenge. The bureau adjusted its original estimates in response by increasing the city's population by 2,470 for 2021 and by 5,185 for 2022.

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