Democrats say citizenship question could derail census test and deter immigrants from participating

U.S. Census Bureau plans to use a questionnaire with a citizenship question as part of its practice test for the 2030 census could jeopardize the once-a-decade head count and scare away immigrants from participating, congressional Democrats warned Thursday.

Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform urged the Census Bureau to drop plans to use the American Community Survey form, which includes the citizenship question, and instead use a traditional census questionnaire that omits it. The on-the-ground tests in Huntsville, Alabama, and Spartanburg, S.C., start next month.

''The Trump Administration is risking millions of taxpayer dollars to pursue policies which could fatally compromise the 2030 count before it even begins,'' they wrote in a letter to acting Census Bureau Director George Cook and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose department oversees the statistical agency.

The Census Bureau and Commerce Department didn't immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The field test gives the statistical agency the chance to learn how to better tally populations that were undercounted during the last census. The head count determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as how $2.8 trillion in federal funding is distributed annually. Among the new methods being tested is the use of U.S. Postal Service workers to conduct tasks previously done by census workers.

In recent weeks, the Census Bureau made public plans for the 2026 test that would use the American Community Survey form, which asks a wide range of questions about participants, and eliminated four other planned locations — Colorado Springs, Colorado, western North Carolina, western Texas and tribal lands in Arizona.

The Democrats raised concerns that the citizenship question on the American Community Survey form being used would lead to an undercount by deterring immigrants, including legal residents, from participating.

In his first term, President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form. The Republican president also signed orders that would have excluded people who are in the U.S. illegally from the figures used to divvy up congressional seats among the states and mandated the collection of citizenship data.

The attempt to add the citizenship question was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court, and both orders were rescinded when Democrat Joe Biden took office in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released.

The Constitution's 14th Amendment says ''the whole number of persons in each state'' should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, the process of divvying up congressional seats, and Electoral College votes among the states. The Census Bureau has interpreted that to mean anybody living in the U.S., regardless of legal status.

Meanwhile, in a federal lawsuit in Louisiana, the Department of Commerce said Thursday that its soon-to-be-released criteria on who should be counted in the 2030 census could lead to the dismissal of a year-old lawsuit brought by four Republican state attorneys general. That court challenge was seeking to exclude people who are in the United States illegally from being counted in the numbers for redrawing congressional districts.

The federal government attorneys asked that a hold on the case remain in place while the bureau determines ''the matter at the heart of this case — whether and how to count citizens of foreign countries in the United States for the 2030 Census.''