The Census Bureau is proposing introducing restrictions on the inclusion of certain demographic questions, which would mean that the census questionnaire would no longer include questions about race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Decennial census data is used to inform most major surveys in the US, meaning that the proposed rule would ultimately impact the availability of reliable race or ethnicity data at state, federal and local levels. 

In a letter to US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick dated 2nd November, the 14 business groups urged the Commerce Department and the Census Bureau "not to finalize this restriction as it applies to race and ethnicity," noting that such questions "were added by our country’s founders to the first census in 1790, and have been part of it every census since."

The letter stated: “Census race and ethnicity data are not a niche statistical input”, and referenced how the data is used to build, weigh and validate most ‘statistically-representative’ datasets used in the US economy and inform economic forecasting, advertising currency, retail and real estate selection, and product testing.

Nielsen is among the signatories, alongside the American Association of Advertising Agencies ( 4As), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Asian Business Association.

Research industry body the Insights Association led the joint commentary from the business groups. Howard Fienberg, senior vice-president of advocacy at the organisation, said: “Businesses rely on the census as the yardstick for knowing whether their information reflects the real America. Strip race and ethnicity from the 2030 census, and every piece of research, including key economic indicators, loses its reference point. That means worse decisions, wasted investment and less competitive American businesses.”

The Insights Association has also individually urged the Department of Commerce and Census Bureau to reject or fully reconsider the proposal, saying that the proposed rule would ‘rewrite the residence criteria that determine who gets counted and where’.

Fienberg said: “When the country’s core demographic data is arbitrarily diminished, and the ruleset for who gets counted and where becomes inconsistent or ambiguous, the errors will not stay in the census. They will rush downstream into every dataset calibrated to it.”

Advocacy group The Census Project has also urged the Census Bureau to reconsider the proposal.

Wired first reported the existence of the proposal in August and the proposed rule was published in the Federal Register in September. The period for public comment has now closed after an initial comments period was extended from October to 2nd November.