WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Utah will not get to count its 11,000 overseas Mormon missionaries in the 2000 Census, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.
That means North Carolina gets to keep its extra seat in the House of Representatives. An opposite ruling would have given the seat to Utah.
Congressional districts awarded each state are tied to the Census.
The Constitution, and U.S. law, require a Census every 10 years to apportion seats in the 435-member House.
In keeping with Supreme Court precedent, the Census Bureau counted federal employees and their dependents living overseas in the 2000 count, but excluded all other Americans living overseas.
Utah and various officials and voting residents challenged the exclusion of the missionaries in a federal suit brought against the Census Bureau and the Commerce Department last January.
The suit contended that the overseas missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- better known as Mormons -- should be included in the Census if overseas federal employees were being included.
Not to do so, the suit argued, violated the Constitution, the rights guaranteed in the First, Fifth and 14th amendments and various federal laws, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
But a three-judge district court panel ruled for the government without hearing argument.
The panel cited the Supreme Court's decision in 1992's Franklin vs. Massachusetts. In that case, the justices ruled that the Census Bureau policy of including overseas federal employees and their dependents was constitutional.
The high court recognized that federal employees working overseas "are a unique subset of Americans abroad," the district court panel said, and there was bipartisan support in Congress for including them in the Census.
Since federal employees come from all 50 states, the panel said, no one state is disadvantaged by including them in the count.
The same could not be said, the panel added, for overseas missionaries who come primarily from one state -- in this case, Utah.
Utah appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, also citing the provisions of the Franklin decision. But the high court affirmed the district court panel in a one-line order Monday without hearing argument.
(No. 01-283, Utah et al vs. Evans et al)
