Cite as: 525 U. S. 316 (1999)
Opinion of Breyer, J.
content as he may determine including the use of sampling procedures and special surveys." At the same time, Congress strengthened § 195's position on sampling, providing that the Secretary "shall" use sampling for purposes other than "for the determination of population for purposes of apportionment." 13 U. S. C. § 195. Given the legal need to interpret subsections of a single statute as creating a single coherent whole, these changes strengthen the case for an interpretation that restricts the scope of § 195 to the kind and use of sampling that called it into being, placing beyond its outer limits a conceptually different (i. e., supplementary) use needed to achieve that statute's basic goal—greater census accuracy.
The Secretary's further proposal, the Nonresponse Followup program, uses statistical sampling not simply to verify a headcount, but to determine the last 10% of population in each census tract. I concede that this kind of statistical "followup" is conceptually similar to the kind of sampling that was before Congress in 1957, in the sense that it involves determining a portion of the total population based upon a sample. But one can consider it supplementary for a different reason—because it simply does not have a great enough impact upon the headcount to be considered a "substitute" falling within § 195's "except" clause.
I note that the Census Bureau has never relied exclusively upon headcounts to determine population. As discussed above, for example, the Census Bureau has supplemented its headcounts with imputation to some degree for at least the last 50 years. Section 195 of the Census Act, at least in my view, could not have been intended as a prohibition so absolute as to stop the Census Bureau from imputing the existence of a living family behind the closed doors of an apparently occupied house, should that family refuse to answer the bell. Similarly, I am not convinced that the Act prevents the use of sampling to ascertain the existence of a certain
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