| Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey urged the U.S. Bureau of the Census to reject a request by the U.S. Department of Justice to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 census, warning that undercounting the population would undermine states’ rights and threaten billions of dollars in critical federal funding.
The multistate letter, sent yesterday to the U.S. Department of Commerce, was co-authored by Healey, New York AG Eric T. Schneiderman and California AG Xavier Becerra, and joined by 16 other attorneys general and the state of Colorado. The attorneys general caution that adding a citizenship question would dramatically reduce participation and disproportionately harm states and cities with large immigrant communities.
According to the letter, this request would also jeopardize critical federal funding states and cities need to provide health insurance, public education funding, food assistance, housing opportunities, energy assistance and other services and support for millions of residents, regardless of citizenship status.
“The census is supposed to count everyone. This request by the Trump Administration will result in an undercount of the Massachusetts population and threatens federal funding for our state and our cities,” Healey said in a statement. “It also threatens states’ fair representation in government and I urge the Census Bureau to reject this reckless request.”
State-level experts with experience coordinating the administration of the census, including Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, share the concerns of the attorneys general.
“This is a clear case of politicization of the Census by the Trump Administration,” Galvin said in a statement. “Adding the proposed citizenship question to the survey would result in an undercount of immigrants in states like Massachusetts, where one out of every six residents is foreign-born. Along with recent moves by the Census Bureau to undercount college students, this change would shortchange Massachusetts in federal funding, and could reduce our representation in both Congress and in the Electoral College.”
The Justice Department requested in December that a citizenship question be added to the 2020 census form sent to every household in the nation, even though the Census is supposed to count all persons – citizens and non-citizens alike. The Justice Department argued that the collection of such information was necessary to ensure proper enforcement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Yet as the attorneys general explain in the letter, this proposal would have precisely the opposite effect by driving down participation in immigrant communities – a concern that is even more acute in today’s political climate.
A population undercount would deprive states of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds that are allocated in part on census data, including funding for education, housing, and infrastructure nationwide. Federal funding also supports essential public programs including Medicaid and SNAP benefits and thus, this proposal would limit funds designed to support some of the most vulnerable populations in each state, including low-income communities, the elderly and children – regardless of citizenship.
In the letter, the attorneys general also point out that this request from the Department of Justice is very late in the process, as the Census Bureau must finalize its questions by the end of March. That does not leave time for the bureau to vet or test a citizenship question, which increases the risk of error and heightens the chance of an undercount in states.
