The United States Census Bureau has proposed rules for the 2030 census that would bar questions about race and ethnicity from the count. Advocates say that would eliminate the “Puerto Rican” checkbox the census uses to identify Puerto Ricans living in the states. The proposal does not mention Puerto Rico or any other US territory.
The Census Bureau published the proposed rule in the Federal Register on September 10, 2026. It would add two new sets of federal regulations: one defining where people are counted, and another restricting what the census can ask.
“No question about race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation shall appear on the short form decennial census questionnaire or any questionnaire used for the enumeration of the population,” the proposed rule says. Questions about biological sex, date of birth, and household relationships would still be allowed. The bureau said it is not proposing limits on the American Community Survey or on other surveys that are not used to count the population.
The checkbox that counts the diaspora
The 2020 census asked respondents whether they were of Hispanic origin. “Puerto Rican” was one of the checkboxes, alongside “Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano” and “Cuban.”
The ban would include that checkbox, according to Puerto Rico Cuenta, a nonpartisan civic campaign mobilizing public comments on the rule. The campaign says the question is the only way the census identifies Puerto Ricans, and that more than 5.8 million Puerto Ricans in the states are identified through it.
“The proposed rule ignores Puerto Rico and the other U.S. territories – American Samoa, Guam, the CNMI, and the USVI -and would deepen a problem the territories already face: a chronic lack of reliable statistical data,” Gretchen Sierra-Zorita wrote in a LinkedIn post analyzing the rule. In 2021, Sierra-Zorita was named deputy director for Puerto Rico and the territories in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
She wrote that the census is Puerto Rico’s only full-count source of race and ethnicity data. In the other four territories, which the American Community Survey does not cover, she said the census long form is the only source of detailed data.
A residence test built around federal tax records
The rule would also redefine where people are counted. A person’s “usual residence” would be where they “have lawfully spent the greatest number of days” between January 3 and April 1. That residence “should be consistent with, and evidenced by, their tax records,” the proposal says.
Only citizens and lawful permanent residents would be counted for apportionment. Other noncitizens, including those whose legal status the bureau describes as “less durable,” would be excluded.
Sierra-Zorita argued the residence test would not work in the territories. She said territorial residents generally file taxes with their own territorial agencies rather than the Internal Revenue Service. She also said about 25% of Puerto Rico’s listed addresses in 2010 lacked a standard street-and-number format, compared with about 3% nationwide, citing a 2013 Census Bureau study.
The rule bases its approach on apportioning seats in the US House among the states. The territories have no voting seats. In 2020, the census counted 3,285,874 residents in Puerto Rico, and the bureau excluded the islands’ population from the apportionment count.
The proposal says the bureau plans to consult federally recognized and state-recognized tribes. It says nothing about consulting territorial governments.
A broader fight over the count
The proposal has drawn opposition beyond the territories. In an October 28 op-ed, Lourdes M. Rosado, president and general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, wrote that the 2020 census undercounted Latinos by almost 5%.
“Removing questions on race and ethnicity would make it harder to track whether Black and brown communities have equal access to education, housing, and healthcare, and make it more difficult to monitor and address racist exclusion from resources and opportunities,” she wrote. Her organization has called for the comment period to be extended by at least another 90 days.
The bureau already extended the comment period once, from October 13 to November 2, 2026. As of October 30, the Federal Register listed 129,161 comments received. Comments can be submitted on Regulations.gov under docket USBC-2026-0628.
Pasquines has previously reported on how the 2020 census undercount risked the political influence of territorial communities in the states.
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