WASHINGTON — The U.S. Census Bureau on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, filed a proposed rule that would rewrite who counts in the 2030 decennial census for House apportionment and what demographic questions appear on the short-form questionnaire.

Under the draft residence criteria, only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents (green-card holders) would be counted for apportionment. Noncitizens without LPR status — including people here illegally, many temporary-status holders, refugees, and asylum seekers — would be excluded from the apportionment base. The bureau says it may rely on administrative records and/or add a legal-status question to the short form to sort people.

Separately, the proposal would bar race, ethnicity, and sexual-orientation questions from the short-form enumeration questionnaire, arguing those fields burden response rates, raise disclosure-avoidance tradeoffs, and are not required for the constitutional apportionment count. Biological sex, date of birth, and household relationships could remain.

The notice is scheduled for Federal Register publication Thursday, Sept. 10, with comments due 30 days after publication. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick signed the draft dated Sept. 8. The administration frames the change as fidelity to “usual residence” and allegiance; critics and former Census Director Rob Santos told USA TODAY that dropping race and ethnicity questions would damage community planning and economic analysis. Legal challenges are widely expected under the 14th Amendment’s “whole number of persons in each State” language.

Apportionment and many federal funding formulas ride on the census count. The Supreme Court blocked a citizenship question for the 2020 census; this proposal goes further by changing who is in the apportionment base itself.

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