Washington, D.C. — The Trump administration is proposing a major change to the 2030 census that would exclude undocumented immigrants and some legal immigrants from the population totals used to divide seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Under the proposal, only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents would be included in the apportionment count, according to Reuters. People living legally in the country on temporary visas could also be excluded. The change could affect congressional representation, Electoral College votes and the distribution of federal funding among states.
The proposal would also remove race and ethnicity questions from the decennial census, although the Census Bureau says such demographic information could still be collected through other federal surveys. Civil-rights organizations argue those data are important for enforcing anti-discrimination and voting-rights laws.
The apportionment provision is likely to face a significant constitutional challenge. The 14th Amendment requires House seats to be apportioned based on the “whole number of persons in each state,” language that historically has included citizens and noncitizens alike.
Trump previously attempted to change the census during his first term. In 2019, the Supreme Court blocked his administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question after finding that the government’s stated Voting Rights Act justification did not adequately match the evidence before the agency. The Court did not rule that asking about citizenship was inherently unconstitutional.
The new proposal has entered a 30-day public comment period and would still need to move through the federal rulemaking process before the 2030 census.
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