Trump abandoned citizenship census question, yet thousands still must answer it

Even after a string of legal defeats led President Donald Trump to abandon his pursuit of a citizenship question on the 2020 census, nearly a quarter of a million households continued receiving questionnaires that posed the controversial query: "Is this person a citizen of the United States?"

The form, part of the 2019 census test, was designed to measure the effect a citizenship question would have on the survey's respondents. The bureau announced the test in mid-June and began mailing questionnaires shortly afterward, just two weeks before the Supreme Court halted the administration's effort, saying it had provided a "contrived" reason for wanting the information.

But had a citizenship question been included in the decennial census, the test questionnaire would have provided the bureau with last-minute information about how the public might react to it. Instead, households across the country are receiving the forms after a weekslong legal and political back-and-forth that saw Trump tangle with the courts before standing down.

"This is another example of how the president's zealous quest to add the citizenship question continues to cause confusion surrounding the upcoming census," said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former staff director of the House's census oversight subcommittee. "The consequences are a lingering confusion and a lingering climate of fear - especially in immigrant communities."

Bureau officials randomly assigned about 480,000 households one of two versions of the test, one with the citizenship question on it and one without. If, for example, fewer people responded to the version with the citizenship question, the bureau could have been prepared to hire more census takers to follow up with households in person.

The bureau's website says the test "will support the goal of the 2020 Census, which is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place." It will help "fine-tune" planning for the real thing. And because the test is part of preparation for the decennial census, the law requires recipients to answer all its questions.

Now that the administration has nixed the proposed question, it is unclear what the federal government will do with the data it gathers from this test. A Census Bureau spokesman did not respond to requests for comment Monday evening.

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