Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier gets history wrong on census citizenship question

Before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed James Uthmeier, his former chief of staff, as attorney general, Uthmeier worked in the first Trump administration in the Department of Commerce, which oversees the U.S. Census Bureau.

Now Uthmeier’s past is present after President Donald Trump called for a rare, mid-decade census to exclude immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

"During my time working in the first Trump Admin, the Supreme Ct (5-4 decision) blocked us from asking in the Census whether someone is a U.S. citizen (though it was asked for over 150 years, prior to Obama admin)," Uthmeier posted Aug. 24 on X. "Illegals shouldn’t be included in apportionment." 

Apportionment is how the federal government determines how many seats each state receives in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s based on population figures reported in the census, including people who are not U.S. citizens.

Uthmeier is right that the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump’s 2019 attempt to add a citizenship question in the 2020 census. But he’s wrong that the census asked the question for 150 years before President Barack Obama came along.

The 2010 census broke from tradition, but the change was in the works before Obama took office, and the Census Bureau continues to ask about citizenship in an annual survey.

"The Obama administration did not change the census question related to citizenship," said Terri Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer and census expert. Instead, the question was  included in the annual American Community Survey, which replaced a long-form census questionnaire. Not everyone who received a census form received the question.  

Joining other states jockeying for congressional seats ahead of the 2026 midterms, Florida Republican legislators convened a select committee on congressional redistricting to look at the state’s map.

PolitiFact contacted Uthmeier’s office for comment but did not hear back by publication.

What’s the history of census citizenship questions?

Uthmeier said a citizenship question was asked in the census "for over 150 years," but it has not been part of the decennial census for all U.S. households that entire time.  

The earliest U.S. census in 1790 asked for the head of the family’s name and number of people in the household, including enslaved people.

The first version of a census citizenship question appeared in 1820, asking each household "the number of foreigners not naturalized." Until 1920, it was asked only of adult men — women and children automatically had the same citizenship status as their husbands or fathers.

Some form of the citizenship question has been included as a general question every decade since 1890 (but not asked of all households), with the exception of 1960, which focused on place of birth.

The last time the Census Bureau came close to asking every household about citizenship status was in 1950, when census workers knocked on doors and interviewed residents. They asked where each person was born and, in a follow-up question for those born outside the U.S., asked if they were a naturalized citizen.

In 1970, the Census Bureau started distributing two different questionnaires: a short form sent to most households and a long form sent to about 1 in 6 households. Only the long version asked about citizenship. 

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In 2000, for example, the long-form questionnaire asked respondents, "Is this person a CITIZEN of the United States?" 

The short form asked for the basics, such as name, date of birth, sex and race. It continued not to ask about citizenship in 1980, 1990 and 2000.

What happened under Obama?

In 2010, the census eliminated the long-form questionnaire in favor of a 10-question short-form questionnaire that didn’t ask about citizenship.

The census bureau had started collecting demographic and socioeconomic information through an alternative questionnaire — the American Community Survey, or ACS, in 2005. The annual survey is sent to about 3.5 million households and continues to ask about citizenship, among other topics.

Plans to stop using the long-form census started years before Obama took office, during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

"To deal with some of these challenges at the beginning of the decade, the 2010 census was re-engineered to build a better, faster and simpler census. The plan was to leverage technology, eliminate the long form and conduct a short-form-only decennial census," Carlos Gutierrez, the commerce secretary under Bush, testified to Congress in 2008, according to The New York Times.

Several government reports from the early 2000s concluded that the American Community Survey produced the same estimates as the long-form census.

"The ACS includes a question on citizenship, as the long-form did. Therefore, President Obama did not change the content of the 2010 Census," Lowenthal said. "Besides, Obama did not take office until 2009 — too late to change the content of the census without risking significant adverse consequences for census operations and, therefore, accuracy."

The questions on the decennial census "have never been political until now," said Misty Lee Heggeness, a University of Kansas associate professor and former U.S. Census Bureau economist. "Changes made to previous census forms had to do with innovations related to survey implementation and data collection and costs."

Census directors appointed by both Republican and Democratic presidents have previously agreed that a question on citizenship would discourage responses and undermine census accuracy. Heggeness co-authored a March 2025 peer-reviewed study that supports that perspective.

Heggeness said the point of the census is to get an accurate count "of all the people in the United States’ borders," as mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

"It’s about getting as many people as possible to respond because an undercount can cause a lot of complications in the following decade," she said.

Our ruling

Uthmeier said citizenship status was asked in the U.S. Census "for over 150 years" prior to the Obama administration.

The last time the decennial census came close to asking every household about citizenship status was in 1950, when it was a follow-up question for foreign-born respondents. Subsequent censuses have asked the question only of a sample of households.

In 2010, the Census Bureau took the citizenship question out of the long-form questionnaire as part of changes planned under the Bush administration. The Census Bureau still asks the question of 3.5 million households each year through the American Community Survey.

We rate this claim False.

PolitiFact Staff Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.