California Attorney General co-led a coalition of 24 attorneys general and two governors on Nov. 2 in a comment letter opposing a proposed U.S. Census Bureau rule that would change how the 2030 Census is taken.
Based on available data, the proposal would exclude roughly 16.1 million people nationwide from the count, including around 3 million California residents, more than 7.5% of the state's population, according to Bonta's office.
The rule would leave out undocumented immigrants, people on temporary work, student and exchange visitor visas, refugees, asylum seekers and even certain U.S. nationals, the coalition said. It argues those exclusions violate the Fourteenth Amendment's requirement to count all persons for congressional apportionment, and the Census Act, which requires the bureau to report each state's total population for dividing House seats.
The proposal would also prohibit questions about race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. The census has collected demographic information, including race, since 1790, and states rely on it to shape policy, identify disparities, evaluate programs and enforce antidiscrimination laws, the letter says.
The coalition also objects to dropping the census's longstanding usual residence standard, which counts people where they typically live and sleep. The proposed rule would instead count people where they lawfully spend the greatest number of days between Jan. 3 and April 1 and would rely on tax records as evidence of residency. The coalition says that could place people in vacation homes or workplaces and distort state population counts.
“The U.S. Constitution requires that the Census count every person living in the United States. The Trump Administration doesn’t get to pick and choose who is included,” Bonta said. “Excluding millions of people is not only blatantly unlawful, but also threatens communities’ political representation and distorts access to critical federal funding.”
California filed the first lawsuit over the Trump administration's attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census in March 2018. The administration dropped that effort after the U.S. Supreme Court found its stated reason inadequate in June 2019, and a federal court permanently blocked the question that August. In March 2026, Bonta joined 21 attorneys general in opposing a plan to add a citizenship question to the 2030 Census test.
The letter was co-led by the attorneys general of California, Minnesota, New Jersey and New York. It was joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai‘i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, and by the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania. The release did not say when the Census Bureau will make a final decision on the rule.
State
Rob Bonta
Attorney General · Democrat
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