DENVER – Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet and a group of Senate colleagues this week reintroduced legislation to prohibit the Secretary of Commerce from including any question regarding one’s citizenship or immigration status on the U.S. census. The Every Person Counts Act also amends Title XIII of the United States Code to clarify that each decennial census shall tabulate the total number of persons in each state.

“The Trump administration’s continued effort to add a citizenship question to the U.S. census targets immigrant communities and politicizes what should be a non-partisan process,” Bennet said. “To protect the integrity of our democratic process, we must make certain each individual is counted and each voice is heard.”

Last week, a U.S. District Judge ordered the administration to abort its plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. However, with a June deadline to print the final census questionnaire, the administration is now pressuring the Supreme Court to review this case and decide whether a question about citizenship can be included on next year’s census survey. The Census Bureau must, by law, provide Congress with the final wording of the census questionnaire by March 31.

The Every Person Counts Act would:

• Require Title XIII of the United States Code to be amended to clarify that each decennial census shall tabulate the total number of persons in each state;
• Prohibit the Secretary of Commerce from including a U.S. citizenship or immigration status question on the census;
• Forbid the construction of any rule that would permit or require the census to exclude populations due to their age, or federal employees and their dependents, and Armed Services personnel stationed abroad, stationed abroad, or other persons outside the United States from being counted as residents of the states to which they usually reside.

The bill is sponsored by U.S. Senators Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY).