Three judges from the U.S. District Court in eastern Virginia have reconfirmed the decision of a district court in Washington that the use of sampling in conducting the 2000 census would be unconstitutional. The Clinton administration has been planning to employ statistical sampling in lieu of an actual head count to estimate 10 percent of the nation's population.

• In the earlier case, three federal judges in Washington ruled against sampling in a case brought by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

• That case is scheduled for review by the Supreme Court on November 30.

• Critics argue that sampling is unreliable and would let the Clinton administration manipulate the figures to Democrats' political advantage.

• As called for in the Constitution, the Census Bureau has used an actual enumeration of citizens -- by mailings and door-to-door surveys -- since 1790.

Census data are used to draw district lines for elections to the House of Representatives and to distribute hundreds of billions of federal dollars.

The suit challenging sampling in the Virginia case was brought by the Southeastern Legal Foundation.