Commerce Department Announcement
Inclusion of a Citizenship Question in the 2020 Census
On March 26, 2018, the Commerce Department, which houses the U.S. Census Bureau, announced that the 2020 decennial census questionnaire will include a citizenship question. Thereafter, the State of California and a coalition of States and cities led by the State of New York filed lawsuits to stop Commerce from including the question, generally arguing that including a citizenship question would suppress the census response rate and result in undercounts that would violate the U.S. Constitution’s mandate to count every resident. Commerce maintains, among other things, that inclusion of the citizenship question in the census questionnaire to the entire U.S….
