North Carolina, which stood to lose a Representative under such an injunction, intervened in the case, disputing Utah's standing to sue.

The Utah federal district court refused to grant the State's injunction ruling in favor of the Census Bureau.

It further argued that imputation did not satisfy the United States Constitution's requirement of an "actual enumeration" for the purpose of apportioning Representatives.

Furthermore, the Census Clause of the Constitution was not violated as the actual enumeration needs to be conducted "in such Manner as" Congress itself "shall by Law direct," which wording which does not forbid the use of statistical methods to improve accuracy.

This case follow several others that rule on 'sampling' in the US census, including Department of Commerce v. United States House of Representatives, 525 U.S. 316 (1999), a suit which followed President Clinton's veto of a law passed by Congress intending to explicitly prohibit sampling, and Wisconsin v. City of New York, 517 U.S. 1 (1996), which ruled that sampling was not required by the Enumeration clause.