Census Bureau filed rule to exclude noncitizens from apportionment count, drop race and ethnicity questions

On September 9, 2026, the U.S. Census Bureau, an agency of the Department of Commerce led by Secretary Howard Lutnick, filed a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled "Decennial Census of the Population of Americans; Proposed Residence Criteria and Proposed Regulations for Demographic Questions" (Federal Register document 2026-18481), posted to the Federal Register's public-inspection page ahead of official publication on September 10. The rule would exclude undocumented immigrants and other noncitizens without a green card from the population counts used to apportion U.S. House seats among the states, arguing that people without a "sufficient tie and allegiance" to the country are not "true inhabitants" for purposes of the Constitution's apportionment clause.

The proposal also seeks to add a citizenship question to the census questionnaire, reviving an effort from Trump's first term that the Supreme Court blocked in 2020, and would eliminate the census's collection of race and ethnicity data for the first time since 1790, while separately barring any question on sexual orientation. NPR reported that civil-rights advocates and researchers warned the changes would jeopardize data used to enforce the Voting Rights Act, draw legislative and congressional districts, and distribute federal funding.

The rule follows public pressure from President Trump, who posted in 2025 that "people who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS." New York Attorney General Letitia James said the state was "exploring our legal options to fight back," pointing to the litigation that stopped a similar first-term effort to exclude noncitizens from apportionment. The proposal must still go through a public comment period under standard notice-and-comment rulemaking before any final rule could take effect for the 2030 census.