US Census Bureau plans survey with citizenship question, alarming experts

The US Census Bureau plans to use a survey form with a citizenship question as part of its practice test of the 2030 census, raising questions about whether the Trump administration might try to make a significant change to the once-a-decade headcount that failed during the president's first term. 

The field test being conducted in Huntsville, Alabama, and Spartanburg, South Carolina, is using questions from the American Community Survey, the comprehensive survey of American life, rather than questions from recent census forms.

Among the questions on the ACS is one that asks, "Is this person a citizen of the United States?" Questions for the census are not supposed to ask about citizenship, and they have not for 75 years.

Last August, Trump instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the US illegally from the head count.

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 US, regardless of legal status.

The bureau did not respond on Thursday to inquiries seeking comment about why the ACS questions were being used for the 2026 test.

Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues, said the ACS questions have never been used for a census field test before. She said the 2026 test -- which was pared down from six locations to two -- has become "a shell of what the Census Bureau proposed and should do to ensure an accurate 2030 Census."  "This full pivot from a real field test is alarming and deserves immediate congressional attention, in my view," Lowenthal said.

In his first term, President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form. He also signed orders that would have excluded people who are in the US illegally from the apportionment figures and mandated the collection of citizenship data.

The attempt to add the citizenship question was blocked by the US Supreme Court, and both orders were rescinded when Democratic President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released.

Republican lawmakers in Congress recently have introduced legislation that would exclude some non-citizens from the apportionment figures. Several GOP state attorneys also have filed federal lawsuits in Louisiana and Missouri seeking to add a citizenship question to the next census and exclude people in the US illegally from the apportionment count.