New Jersey v. New York, 523 U.S. 767, 52 (1998)

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818

NEW JERSEY v. NEW YORK

Stevens, J., dissenting

programs." Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U. S. 788, 814 (1992). Given the fact that a shift of only one or two hundred persons from one State to another might cause a State either to lose one of its seats in Congress or to fail to gain the number warranted by its relative increase in population, the accuracy of the census count is surely a matter of vital importance to the State.4 The consistent treatment of Ellis Island residents as residents of New York in the federal census is a matter that must have come to the attention of New Jersey and which was clearly of sufficient importance to prompt a vigorous objection if responsible state officials believed that those residents really lived in New Jersey. The fact that the Island was under federal control does not minimize in the slightest the importance of the census figures, or the importance of the other public acts that authorized Ellis Island residents to vote in New York elections.

III

There is uncontradicted testimony that between 1892 and 1954 there were hundreds of births and thousands of deaths on the Island. Since the hospital was located on the filled portions of the Island, virtually all of those births and deaths must have occurred in what is now claimed to be part of New Jersey. Presumably each of those births and each of those deaths was recorded in either a birth certificate or a death certificate. There is no evidence that any such certificate was issued by New Jersey. Given the fact that all of the relevant birth certificates and all of the relevant death certificates that have been found were issued by New York authorities, it is reasonable to infer that New York actually issued hundreds of birth certificates and thousands of death certificates to record events that occurred on Ellis Island. A preponderance of the evidence therefore would support a finding that throughout the relevant period New York per-4 See generally Department of Commerce v. Montana, 503 U. S. 442 (1992).

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