For Immediate Release

OAKLAND, Calif. — The National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) submitted a comment letter late Monday to the U.S. Department of Commerce that opposes a proposed rule that would reshape the 2030 Census, and urges the Census Bureau to withdraw it in its entirety. In its comment, NCYL warns that the proposed changes would undercount children, exclude millions of residents from the apportionment count, and severely limit the collection of demographic data that young people and the systems serving them depend on for the enforcement of their civil rights.

“Children are already undercounted in the census, and this proposal would make it worse,” said Melissa Adamson, Senior Attorney at NCYL. “When a child isn’t counted, the funding meant for them disappears. That means fewer resources for their school, their health care, and their well-being. We urge the Census Bureau to withdraw this rule and preserve an accurate census.”

The proposed rule makes three changes that would compromise the accuracy of the 2030 census and harm children: it would redefine how and where a person’s usual residence is determined, it would exclude noncitizens from the census count, and it would restrict the collection of data on race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Children and youth are already consistently undercounted in the census. The 2020 Census missed children younger than 18 by 2.1%, and children ages 0 to 4 were the most undercounted age group of all.

NCYL’s submitted comment draws on its work alongside young people across the country and details who the proposal would likely undercount or miss entirely. This includes:

• Children in the foster system, who change placements frequently and likely would be miscounted under the new residence definition.
• Students experiencing homelessness, who move between friends, family, shelters and cars and rarely appear in tax records, putting Title I and McKinney-Vento education funding at risk.
• Youth in juvenile facilities, roughly 29,300 on any given day, who would be counted where they are confined rather than in the home communities they return to and need supports in.
• Youth impacted by trafficking, who face extreme housing instability. In one study, youth with child welfare contact who had experienced commercial sexual exploitation had four times more housing changes than their peers.
• Newcomer immigrant youth, who would likely be omitted entirely under the proposed rule’s exclusion of noncitizens. Fear of immigration enforcement could also keep whole households from responding, including mixed-status families with U.S. citizen children.

The census determines how federal dollars reach children. In 2023, 70 programs serving children received census-guided funding totaling almost $800 billion, accounting for about 35% of all census-guided funding that year. Those programs include Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and school meals, Title I, special education, Head Start and child care block grants.

Because the census sets these formulas for 10 years, a single undercount follows a child through school. A 3-year-old not counted in the 2030 census becomes a 13-year-old in 2039 whose district and communities never received the resources meant for them.

And, without crucial demographic data, such as race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, disparities across these systems in which NCYL works become harder to see, harder to enforce against, and harder to address.

NCYL is calling on the Census Bureau to withdraw the proposed rule in its entirety. Read the full comment letter here.

###

The National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) advances justice for children and youth through impact litigation, policy advocacy, collaboration, and research. For more than 50 years, NCYL has worked to ensure that young people have the resources, opportunities, and support they need to thrive.