Cite as: 525 U. S. 316 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
sampling procedures in gathering supplemental, nonapportionment census information regarding population, unemployment, housing, and other matters collected in conjunction with the decennial census—much of which is now collected through what is known as the "long form"—but it did not authorize the use of sampling procedures in connection with apportionment of Representatives. See also 1957 Hearing 7-8 ("Experience has shown that some of the information which is desired in connection with a census could be secured efficiently through a sample survey which is conducted concurrently with the complete enumeration of other items").
In 1964, Congress repealed former § 25(c) of the Census Act, see Act of Aug. 31, 1964, 78 Stat. 737, which had required that each enumerator obtain "every item of information" by personal visit to each household, 68 Stat. 1015. The repeal of this section permitted the Bureau to replace the personal visit of the enumerator with a form delivered and returned via the Postal Service. Pursuant to this new authority, census officials conducted approximately 60 percent of the census through a new "mailout-mailback" system for the first time in 1970. See M. Anderson, The American Census: A Social History 210-211 (1988). The Bureau then conducted followup visits to homes that failed to return census forms. Thus, although the legislation permitted the Bureau to conduct a portion of the census through the mail, there was no suggestion from any quarter that this change altered the prohibition in § 195 on the use of statistical sampling in determining the population for apportionment purposes.
In 1976, the provisions of the Census Act at issue in this case took their present form. Congress revised § 141 of the Census Act, which is now entitled "Population and other census information." It amended subsection (a) to authorize the Secretary to "take a decennial census of population as of the first day of April of such year, which date shall be known as the 'decennial census date', in such form and content as
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