Commerce Proposes 2030 Census That Counts Citizens and Green-Card Holders for House Seats — and Drops Race Questions

The Commerce Department on Wednesday published a proposed rule for the 2030 census that would count only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents when the government allots House seats, exclude people in the country illegally and many others without a green card, and stop asking race and ethnicity questions that have appeared on the census since 1790. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick signed the notice. A public comment period runs through mid-October. Lawsuits are already being previewed.

The Census Bureau would add two new parts to federal regulations. One sets “usual residence” rules for the apportionment count — the numbers that decide how many of the 435 House seats, and how many Electoral College votes, each state receives. The other governs demographic questions. Under the residence draft, a foreign citizen who is also a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident as of April 1 of a census year would be counted at a U.S. usual residence. “All other citizens of foreign countries” would not be counted for apportionment. The bureau’s preamble says illegal aliens and aliens whose legal status is “less durable and indefinite in length than lawful permanent resident status” are not “true inhabitants,” members of the body politic, or persons with a usual residence in the United States because they lack a sufficient “tie and allegiance.” It invites comment on whether other statuses are close enough to a green card to count. It also says the bureau is considering using administrative records to sort legal status.

That goes beyond President Trump’s 2025 instruction that people in the country illegally “WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.” The published rule would also leave out many people who are here lawfully but do not hold permanent residence — including, depending on the final definition, temporary visa holders and other non-LPR categories that news organizations have listed as refugees, asylees, and temporary statuses. The Wall Street Journal cited analyses putting the illegal population near 15 million. How many additional legal non-LPRs would drop out of the apportionment base is not fixed in the proposal. The 14th Amendment requires apportionment using “the whole number of persons in each State,” the language states and civil-rights groups have used for decades to count everyone living here regardless of status. The administration’s reading ties “usual residence” to durable permission from the sovereign and allegiance. The first Trump term’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 form was blocked by the Supreme Court; this rule tries to change who is in the apportionment denominator through residence criteria rather than only through a form question. Some coverage notes the bureau may still produce a broader population tally used for federal funding formulas even if the House count is narrower. The rule as posted is written around the apportionment residence test.

The same package would drop race and ethnicity questions and bar questions about sexual orientation. Lutnick’s notice says “substantial doubts about the meaning, significance, and impact of attempting to categorize persons by race and ethnicity” have surfaced and that the decennial count should be “colorblind” and not “distorted” by “immaterial personal characteristics.” Civil-rights groups and demographers say those items are used for Voting Rights Act enforcement, redistricting analysis, and program targeting. The administration frames them as outside the constitutional headcount.

House seats and Electoral College votes follow the apportionment numbers. Independent forecasts that model citizen-only or noncitizen-excluded counts have shown California and New York losing seats and Texas and Florida gaining if the base shrinks that way; those are projections from other datasets, not a Commerce score attached to Wednesday’s rule. Federal grant formulas that use census population would also be in play if agencies treat the new residence rules as the official count. New York Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday her office is exploring a challenge and that “every person living in the United States, regardless of immigration status, must be counted.” The proposal is not final. Comments close Oct. 13. After that the bureau can revise and issue a final rule, which challengers have said they will take to court before the 2030 enumeration.