A group of Democratic senators have introduced a bill that would require the U.S. census to ask participants their gender identity and sexual orientation.
The bill, the Census Equality Act, would require the questions to appear on the forms beginning in 2030. They would also be added in 2020 to the American Community Survey, which 1 in 38 households are required by law to complete each year.
The information gained from the surveys helps lawmakers decide how to allocate more than $800 billion in federal spending. Supporters of the legislation say that adding the information on gender identity or sexual orientation would affect funding on Medicaid, a government healthcare program for low-income people, or the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, informally known as food stamps. It could also help fund more access to Section 8 housing vouchers, which subsidize rent.
Estimates suggest that roughly 10 million people in the U.S. identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Multiple studies have shown that people in this group are more likely than average to fall below the poverty line.
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“The spirit of the census is that no one should go uncounted and no one should be invisible,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., one of the authors of the bill, said in a statement. “We must expand data collections efforts to ensure the LGBTQ community is not only seen, but fully accounted for in terms of government resources provided.”
The legislation was co-introduced by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and keeps in place the same privacy laws that the census currently has.
In the past, the surveys have asked participants to identify their sex and allowed them to select “male” or “female,” and beginning in 2020 the census forms will ask them to identify whether they are in couples of “same sex” or “opposite sex.” Certain government agencies and LGBTQ rights groups had asked for sexual orientation and gender identity also to be included, but the agency announced in 2017 that it would not pursue those questions.
The Census Equality Act would require those questions, but it would first direct the Census Bureau to examine what the best phrasing would be.
Advocates hope that such data would shed more light on discrimination cases in court and to allow federal officials to enforce civil rights protections, such as disparities faced by same-sex couples.
