In a letter addressed to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, the trade body said decennial census race and ethnicity data is “irreplaceable”.

Howard Fienberg, vice-president of advocacy at the Insights Association, wrote in the letter: “By hobbling the work of our $89.3bn US industry, the proposed elimination of race/ethnicity data from the decennial census would also create significant costs and huge risk across the many varied industries that rely on our insights for their decision-making.”

Race and ethnicity census data is “not just one input among many”, read the letter, but “a key statistical benchmark against which virtually every representative study conducted in the United States is designed, weighted, and validated”.

Wired first reported the existence of the proposed rule on 8^th August, and Talking Points Memo reported that it had obtained a draft of the proposed rule, which is reportedly under consideration by the Department of Commerce.

The Insights Association asked the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau to: withdraw or ‘substantially revise’ the draft rule; provide a public rulemaking process so that the industry and others can evaluate and respond; engage with data users, particularly in the insights industry, before finalising any changes to core demographic data collection.

The next US census is set to take place in 2030. The decennial population survey has collected race and ethnicity data since it began in 1790.  

In 2019, the Trump administration attempted to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, but the US Supreme Court blocked the move.