The Census Bureau said it is still formulating the details, but bureau officials have previously described trying to find “the sweet spot” between data confidentiality and data accuracy.
Last month, the state of Alabama and Alabama politicians sued the Census Bureau and the Commerce Department, which oversees the statistical agency, claiming differential privacy will result in inaccurate data.
On Monday, a pair of civil rights groups also raised concerns about differential privacy in a report.
Differential privacy could lower the quality of the data used for redrawing congressional and legislative districts, according to a report from Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, also known as MALDEF, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice AAJC.
Commerce Secretary defends controversial census privacy technique abc10.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from abc10.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Other states have already started working on backup plans, said Ben Williams, a redistricting expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Their options include asking courts to provide relief, passing new laws or constitutional amendments changing the map-making deadlines and changing elections dates. One other option includes using other data sets for redistricting and then reconciling those data sets with the redistricting data the Census Bureau releases after July, Williams said.
The once-a-decade census is used to determine how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets. It also is used for redrawing state and local political districts and determining the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year.