Immigration and Citizenship
Comments on Proposed Information Collection on 2020 Census
In Brief
The Constitution requires the Census Bureau to count all persons, not merely citizens.
Tweet This
A new, untested citizenship question would be an end-run around the Constitution’s text, history, and values. It cannot be squared with the federal government’s constitutional obligation to ensure a national count of all persons—regardless of where they are from or their immigration status.
Tweet This
Such a question would result in inaccurate data, thereby biasing congressional apportionment, redistricting, and funding decisions, for an entire decade.
Tweet This
CAC submitted a formal comment to the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the Trump Administration’s decision to insert a mandatory citizenship question into the 2020 Census.
In our comment, we urged the Commerce Department to remove that mandatory question from the 2020 Census asking all persons to divulge their citizenship status. We explained that the Trump Administration’s “effort to game the Census and manipulate the national head count our Framers wrote into the Constitution should be rejected. Failing to count all persons in the United States, as the Constitution mandates, would deal a huge blow to our democracy. The stakes are high, and there are no do-overs permitted—we must get it right, and get it right now.”
More from Immigration and Citizenship
April 1, 2026
CAC Release: Justices Skeptical of Administration’s Domicile-Driven Approach to Birthright Citizenship
WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Trump v....
March 31, 2026
Most Americans Favor Birthright Citizenship. That Wasn’t Always True.
Elizabeth Wydra was quoted in the New York Times discussing the history of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship...
March 30, 2026
Why the Supreme Court will get the birthright citizenship case right
Smita Ghosh's Slate article about Lynch v. Clarke and birthright citizenship was cited in an op-ed in the National Catholic...
March 21, 2026
Legal History Blog Weekly Roundup
CAC Senior Appellate Counsel Smita Ghosh's article in Slate about birthright citizenship was cited in...
March 24, 2026
CAC Release: Justices Consider Government’s Novel Reading of Law Concerning Asylum-Seekers at the Border
WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Noem v....
March 20, 2026
The Supreme Court’s Birthright Citizenship Decision Hinges on a Case You’ve Never Heard Of
CAC Senior Appellate Counsel Smita Ghosh's article about the history of birthright citizenship in Slate magazine was featured...