Sponsors
The bill shifts apportionment and data practices to favor residents counted by citizenship—giving states with larger citizen populations more representation and clearer redistricting guidance, while raising privacy risks, likely reducing census participation and representation for areas with many noncitizens, and imposing new administrative costs.
States with higher citizen populations (and their voters) will gain greater representation in the House and Electoral College beginning with the 2030 apportionment.
State and local governments would receive citizenship-count data soon after the census, giving officials timely population breakdowns to inform planning, resource allocation, and redistricting decisions.
Researchers and policymakers will gain standardized, state-level citizenship composition data useful for demographic research and policy analysis.
Noncitizen residents will not be counted for congressional apportionment beginning in 2030, reducing representation for states and communities with large noncitizen populations.
Asking about citizenship could reduce census participation among immigrants and household members, increasing the risk of undercounts that would harm representation and federal funding formulas.
Collecting and storing citizenship information raises privacy and safety risks for immigrants and household members if those data are exposed or misused.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Adds a four-category citizenship question to future decennial censuses and excludes noncitizens from the population used to apportion Representatives and Electoral College votes, affecting redistricting.
Introduced January 21, 2026 by Tom Barrett · Last progress January 21, 2026
Requires the Census Bureau, starting with the 2030 decennial census, to add a checkbox or similar option for respondents to report citizenship status for each household member using four categories (U.S. citizen; U.S. national not citizen; alien lawfully residing; alien unlawfully residing) and to publish state-level counts by those categories. It also changes how Representatives and Electoral College votes are apportioned by excluding noncitizens from the population totals used for apportionment beginning with the apportionment based on the 2030 census, and adds a provision that limits how congressional redistricting occurs after an apportionment (with a redistricting-related effective date after the November 2024 election). A severability clause preserves the rest of the law if part is struck down. The changes alter census questions and reporting, remove noncitizens from apportionment counts, and introduce new legal and implementation issues for states, the Census Bureau, and communities with large immigrant populations. The text contains an ambiguous redistricting provision and does not include funding for implementation.