The Census Bureau has proposed changing who counts when House seats are divided among the states and restricting what the 2030 Census questionnaire can ask.

The first part of the September 10 proposed rule would change the apportionment base, the population total used to divide the 435 House seats among the states. Citizens and lawful permanent residents would remain in that total. Undocumented immigrants and noncitizens with less durable legal status would be excluded.

The second part would prohibit questions about race, ethnicity and sexual orientation on the short form and any other questionnaire used to enumerate the population. It would not bar those questions from the American Community Survey or prevent the bureau from obtaining demographic information through government records.

Neither change is final. Comments are due October 13, 2026, before the bureau decides whether to issue a final rule for the 2030 Census.

The bureau wrote the two policies so that either one could proceed without the other.

The first changes the residence rules. The census has long tried to count each person once at the place where that person usually lives. For the 2020 count, the bureau said foreign citizens living in the United States should be counted at their usual American residence, regardless of immigration status. Foreign visitors on vacation or business were excluded.

The new proposal uses immigration status to draw a narrower line. Lawful permanent residents, often called green card holders, would remain in the apportionment base. Undocumented immigrants would not. The rule would also exclude legal statuses that the bureau considers less durable than permanent residence.

The text does not identify every status that would fall outside the line. It asks whether any other status is sufficiently similar to lawful permanent residence to qualify. That leaves people on temporary visas and other time-limited lawful statuses without a definite answer until the bureau writes a final rule.

To classify noncitizens, the bureau is considering government and commercial records or a legal-status question on the short form. The Supreme Court held in 2019 that the commerce secretary has authority to ask about citizenship. The Court still rejected the 2020 decision because the secretary's stated explanation did not match the administrative record. The decision did not prohibit a future citizenship question supported by a lawful process.

The questionnaire restriction is different. It would prohibit race, ethnicity and sexual-orientation questions on forms used for the enumeration. The proposal expressly leaves the American Community Survey and other non-enumeration surveys untouched.

The Constitution requires an enumeration every ten years. The Fourteenth Amendment says House seats must be apportioned by counting the whole number of persons in each state, with a historical exception that no longer operates.

Congress has also authorized the commerce secretary to determine the census's form and content under Title 13, Section 141 of the United States Code. The resulting data are used to redraw districts and distribute federal funds, among other purposes described by the Census Bureau.

Race and ethnicity data have a specific role in redistricting. Under Public Law 94-171, the bureau gives states detailed population files for drawing legislative districts. The Justice Department uses census race and ethnicity data when enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Removing those questions would not end all demographic data collection, but it would change where the data come from and whether they remain reliable at the block level.

The proposal also defines an enumeration period from January 3 through April 1 of a census year. The bureau could use records created after April 1 if they provide evidence of where a person lived during that period. A mismatch would carry unusual weight because it could determine whether a noncitizen enters the apportionment base at all.

The Census Bureau's legal theory is that usual residence requires more than physical presence. It ties residence to allegiance, permission to settle and an enduring connection to the country. On that reading, citizens and lawful permanent residents belong in the apportionment base, while people without durable status do not.

Two state officials have pressed that argument from outside the administration. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier's April petition asked the bureau to exclude undocumented immigrants from apportionment. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway's January lawsuit went further by seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders. Hanaway argues that representation belongs to citizens and lawful permanent residents because they are members of the political community.

The bureau makes a separate case for the questionnaire limits. Its proposal says fewer sensitive questions could improve response rates and reduce disclosure risk. It argues that administrative records and the American Community Survey could supply some demographic information without placing every question on the enumeration form.

Opponents start with the Constitution's reference to the whole number of persons, not citizens or lawful permanent residents. They argue that usual residence asks where a person lives, while the proposal substitutes a test of political membership that the Fourteenth Amendment does not contain.

Their practical objection is accuracy. Legal-status records can be incomplete, outdated or difficult to match. Under the proposal, a mistaken match could remove a resident from the apportionment base rather than merely place that person at the wrong address.

The second objection concerns the questionnaire. The Associated Press reported that population researcher Beth Jarosz said sample surveys cannot replace a complete count for neighborhood-level data. Manjusha Kulkarni of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California argued that removing race and ethnicity questions would weaken the government's ability to understand whether communities are safe, healthy and fairly represented.

The legal fight is not resolved. In Trump v. New York, the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the first Trump administration's 2020 exclusion policy because the dispute was not ready for decision. The Court did not rule that excluding undocumented immigrants was constitutional or unconstitutional.

A possible middle ground begins by separating representation from statistical detail. No party to the dispute has endorsed the full package below.

The bureau could continue counting every usual resident for apportionment, preserving the long-standing rule tied to where people live on April 1. It could publish separate citizenship and legal-status estimates from the American Community Survey and audited administrative records. Those estimates could inform immigration policy without changing a state's House representation.

On demographic questions, the bureau could retain the minimum race and ethnicity information needed for redistricting while testing whether other details can move to follow-up surveys or administrative sources.

That approach would not settle the argument over political membership. It would keep the disputed legal-status test outside the apportionment calculation while giving the bureau room to shorten the form and protect privacy.

The immediate decision belongs to the rulemaking process. The useful questions for comments are concrete: Which legal statuses count as durable, how will the bureau correct record errors and what data can replace the fields it removes? By October 13, supporters and opponents will need answers that work outside a courtroom brief.

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