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NRF: Census Bureau’s Proposed Rule Changes Threaten to Undermine the 2030 Census

Washington, D.C. – Today, the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) submitted a public  comment in opposition to the Census Bureau’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) announced on September 10, 2026:

“The Census Bureau’s proposed rule changes would result in a deliberate miscount of tens of millions of Americans across the country,” said Marina Jenkins, Executive Director of the NRF. “If implemented, these politically-motivated and unconstitutional criteria threaten to undermine equal representation, misallocate billions in federal funding, and wildly distort population data nationwide. Make no mistake, this is a blatantly partisan effort to weaponize a non-partisan institution for political gain, and this dangerous effort must be stopped. The NRF will use every tool at its disposal to ensure the 2030 census count is fair and accurate.”

The NRF’s comment outlines how the Bureau’s several proposed rule changes could have a devastating effect on representation and the allocation of federal funds for communities across the country. The NRF’s comment opposes several elements of the NPRM, including the proposal to include a citizenship question and exclude non-citizens from the apportionment count, to prohibit questions about race and ethnicity, to use tax records to determine people’s “usual residence,” and to change the enumeration date from the long-standing Census Day of April 1st. The comment outlines how these proposals violate the U.S. Constitution and 230 years of historical precedent for how the decennial census has been conducted. Relatedly, the NRF’s Policy Lab recently published a report examining the potentially harmful impact the proposed residence rule could have on representation and federal funding for colleges and universities.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

The NRF has long played a key role in combating legal efforts to undermine the census. Most recently, it was behind successful efforts to thwart a conservative legal effort to overturn the 2020 census count in lower federal court. In February 2026, the NRF-supported intervenor-defendants successfully argued for the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ legal claims on the grounds that they were time-barred by the four-year statute of limitations. After that, the University of South Florida College Republicans and the Pinellas County Young Republicans filed an amended complaint in order to reopen the case, and the NRF-supported intervenor-defendants again asked the court to dismiss the claims. The federal district court again dismissed the lawsuit in July 2026. After the Republican plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, NRF-supported intervenors filed a brief asking the Court to affirm the lower federal court’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit on procedural grounds.

During the first Trump Administration, the NRF defeated efforts to tamper with the census count, including the Department of Commerce’s proposal to add a citizenship question to the census. The NRF directed the litigation on behalf of a group of plaintiffs in Kravitz v. U.S. Department of Commerce. The NRF and other organizations’ efforts eventually led to a crucial U.S. Supreme Court decision that blocked the Trump Administration from adding the citizenship question to the 2020 Census. 

In 2020, after President Trump tried again to manipulate apportionment by issuing a memorandum asserting his intention to exclude undocumented people from apportionment, the NRF filed a lawsuit called Useche v. Trump. This case also reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which punted on the issue because of President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

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