VI. Language Access Could Determine Who Can Participate Directly

Language access is part of the basic machinery of an accurate census. A person cannot provide a complete household roster, apply Census residence rules, or answer questions about race, ethnicity, and relationships accurately if the questionnaire and assistance are not available in a language they understand.

For millions of households, translated questionnaires, multilingual telephone assistance, bilingual field staff, and understandable supporting materials determine whether direct participation is realistically possible. Without those services, residents may be forced to rely on relatives, neighbors, or community organizations to interpret the census. Others may provide incomplete information, misunderstand who should be included, or not respond at all.

The consequences extend beyond item nonresponse. A household that cannot participate directly may be more likely to enter field follow-up, receive a proxy response, or be completed through administrative records. Those alternatives may establish that a housing unit is occupied, but they are less likely to capture a complete roster, current household relationships, and self-identified demographic characteristics.

Language barriers can therefore interact with the broader risks described earlier in this guide. Reduced language access can lower self-response, increase reliance on in-office enumeration, and make it harder for Census to detect when outside records omit or misrepresent residents. The communities most affected may also include recent immigrants and complex or multigenerational households whose information is especially difficult to reconstruct from administrative sources.

Language access also affects trust. People may be more willing to participate when official materials make clear that Census expects and welcomes responses from people who use languages other than English. Conversely, an English-dominant operation may signal that some communities are peripheral to the count, even when translated help technically remains available through a limited channel.

The current Operational Plan generally assumes a multilingual census. But those commitments now exist alongside federal policies favoring English-language government operations. This chapter examines what the plan currently promises, how later policy decisions could narrow those services, and which safeguards are needed to ensure that people with limited English proficiency retain a meaningful opportunity to respond for themselves.

A. What the Operational Plan Promises

The 2030 Census Operational Plan anticipates a substantial multilingual response and communications program. Although the exact languages and services have not yet been finalized, the plan assumes that Census will identify the non-English languages requiring support and provide translated questionnaires, assistance, and public information.

The Bureau expects to use American Community Survey data and other research to determine which languages are most widely used and where support is needed. That analysis will help shape the languages offered nationally, the materials produced for particular communities, and the deployment of language resources during collection.

The current plan anticipates translating the census questionnaire and related materials into selected languages. Supporting materials may include instructions, language guides, reminder notices, frequently asked questions, and information explaining who should be counted and how responses are protected.

Census also expects to offer more than one multilingual response channel. The plan assumes that people will be able to respond online and receive telephone assistance in multiple languages. These services are especially important because they allow residents to complete the census directly rather than relying on another household member or an informal interpreter.

Language support is also expected to extend across the communications campaign. Census anticipates translating public-facing webpages, videos, audio materials, scripts, and other communications used to explain the census and encourage participation. Multilingual materials may support advertising, community partnerships, questionnaire assistance, and field interactions as well as the questionnaire itself.

These commitments recognize that translation must be consistent across the operation. A questionnaire offered in a person’s language will be less useful if the invitation letter, verification webpage, telephone menu, or enumerator script is available only in English. Residents need to understand both what Census is asking and how to access the response method.

The plan also leaves important details open. It does not yet identify the final set of supported languages, the response modes available in each language, or the threshold Census will use to determine that a community requires assistance. Nor does it establish whether every service assumed in the baseline plan will remain in place if later Commerce Department policies restrict the use of languages other than English.

ACS data provide an important foundation for planning, but Census will also need information capable of identifying small, geographically concentrated, and rapidly changing language communities. National prevalence alone may not show where a particular language is essential to accurate local enumeration. Census will therefore need to supplement statistical estimates with testing, local knowledge, and consultation with community partners.

The current Operational Plan nevertheless establishes a meaningful baseline: a 2030 Census that uses data to identify language needs, translates questionnaires and supporting materials, provides multilingual online and telephone response, and communicates with the public through multiple languages and formats. Later changes that narrow those services should be understood as departures from the planned design, not as minor adjustments to an English-only operation.

Current commitment

The Operational Plan assumes that Census will identify language needs, translate questionnaires and supporting materials, provide multilingual online and telephone response, and produce translated communications across multiple formats.

Open design question

Census has not finalized the supported languages, the services available in each language, or the standards used to determine where additional assistance is needed.

Why advocates should care

These decisions will help determine whether people with limited English proficiency can answer for themselves or are instead pushed toward nonresponse, proxy reporting, and administrative enumeration.

B. The Conflict Created by the Commerce English-Language DAO

The multilingual design described in the Operational Plan now exists in tension with a later Commerce Department policy favoring English-language government operations. Until Census explains how the two will be reconciled, the language-access commitments described above should be treated as uncertain rather than guaranteed.

The underlying executive order designated English as the official language of the United States and revoked an earlier order directing federal agencies to provide language assistance. But it did not require agencies to eliminate existing multilingual documents or services. It expressly left agency heads with discretion to continue them where necessary to fulfill their missions and serve the public.

The Commerce Department’s English-language DAO goes further by creating a department-wide presumption in favor of English and requiring non-English services to be justified through specified exceptions. Department Administrative Orders are mandatory policies that apply across Commerce operating units, including the Census Bureau.

That creates a basic unresolved question for the 2030 Census: Does conducting an accurate constitutional enumeration qualify for an exception broad enough to preserve the multilingual operation assumed in the Operational Plan?

There is a strong practical case that it should. Language assistance is not an optional customer service added to the census after the operational design is complete. It is one of the methods Census uses to obtain direct and accurate responses. In 2020, people could respond online or by telephone in English and 12 non-English languages, and Census provided print and video guides in 59 non-English languages. Approximately 2.86 million self-responses were submitted in languages other than English.

Census has nevertheless not publicly stated that the decennial census is exempt from the DAO, identified who has authority to approve an exception, or explained whether the exception would cover the full language program rather than only selected services. That uncertainty matters because a narrow interpretation could preserve some translated information while dismantling the integrated system that makes direct participation possible.

Which Languages Will Be Available in Each Response Mode?

Census should state clearly which languages will be supported online, by telephone, on paper, and during field interviews. Saying generally that the census will be multilingual does not establish that residents will be able to complete the questionnaire through the response mode they can actually use.

Language support is not interchangeable across modes. A translated online questionnaire does not assist a person who lacks internet access or digital confidence. A written language guide does not replace a telephone interview conducted in that language. A telephone option may be inaccessible to someone who cannot navigate an English-language automated menu to reach it.

Census should publish a language-by-mode plan showing:

• which languages will have fully translated questionnaires;

• which will be available through online and telephone response;

• which will receive printed or video language guides;

• which will be supported during field interviews; and

• what assistance will be available for languages outside the nationally supported set.

The Bureau should also explain whether the Commerce DAO changes the data-driven process it planned to use for selecting languages. The 2020 language-program assessment recommended using 2026 American Community Survey estimates to determine which languages and levels of support are needed for 2030. Census should confirm that actual community need, rather than a presumption against translation, will continue to govern those decisions.

Will Translated Outreach and Partnership Materials Continue?

The questionnaire is only one part of language access. People must also be able to understand the invitation, recognize legitimate Census communications, learn how to respond, and receive accurate information about confidentiality and residence rules.

The Operational Plan assumes that Census will translate communications, webpages, videos, audio materials, scripts, and other resources used by the public and community partners. Restricting those materials could leave a technically available multilingual questionnaire hidden behind an English-language communications system.

Community organizations may be able to create some of their own translations, but Census should not shift responsibility for official information onto outside partners. Organizations should not have to interpret complex residence rules, confidentiality protections, or questionnaire instructions without authoritative materials in the languages used by their communities.

Unofficial translation also creates avoidable inconsistency. Different organizations may translate the same concept differently, and community members may reasonably question whether locally produced materials reflect official Census policy. The Bureau should confirm that it will continue producing and quality-checking translated outreach and partnership materials rather than relying primarily on community organizations to fill the gap.

Will Bilingual Mailings Continue?

Bilingual mailings can help residents recognize that the census is intended for them and direct them immediately to an appropriate response option. In 2020, Census sent initial bilingual English-Spanish mailings to roughly 13 million households and distributed bilingual paper questionnaires in selected areas.

The value of these mailings extends beyond the words on the envelope. They signal that a multilingual response is official and reduce the likelihood that residents will discard the mailing as irrelevant, incomprehensible, or fraudulent. They also allow a household to identify the correct response pathway without first seeking help in English.

Census should state whether bilingual mailings will continue, which languages will be considered, and whether the Commerce DAO requires special approval for their production. It should also explain whether bilingual mailing decisions will continue to rely on local language-use data or will be limited by a department-wide translation policy.

Will Census Questionnaire Assistance Remain Multilingual?

Census Questionnaire Assistance is both a help service and a direct response mode. In 2020, residents could call language-specific telephone lines, ask questions, and complete the census with an interviewer. The 2020 operation offered internet and telephone response in 12 non-English languages.

Multilingual CQA is particularly important for people who can speak a language more comfortably than they can read it, who need help applying residence rules, or who do not have a reliable internet connection. A translated paper guide or website cannot provide the same interactive assistance.

Census should confirm whether CQA will continue offering complete interviews in multiple languages, not merely limited interpretation or recorded instructions. It should also identify whether interactive voice response menus, callback services, coverage follow-up, and fraud-verification assistance will be multilingual.

The route into the service matters as much as the eventual availability of an interpreter. A person should not have to navigate an extended English-language menu or explain their needs in English before receiving assistance in another language.

Will Field Staffing and Interpreter Support Be Affected?

Language access must continue after self-response ends. If a household does not respond online, by mail, or by telephone, Census may send an enumerator to the address. That interaction is unlikely to produce a complete and accurate response if the enumerator and household cannot communicate.

Census should explain whether it will continue recruiting and assigning bilingual enumerators in areas with demonstrated language needs. It should also describe the interpreter support available when a language match is not possible, including telephone or remote interpretation and procedures for less commonly spoken languages.

Staffing decisions should be based on the languages used in each community, not only on national totals. A language may be spoken by a relatively small population nationally but be essential to enumeration in a particular neighborhood, city, tribal area, or refugee community.

Census should also clarify whether language assistance will be available during revisits, quality-control follow-up, group quarters enumeration, Mobile Questionnaire Assistance events, and other interactions beyond the initial household interview. Restricting multilingual services to the principal questionnaire would leave important parts of the operation inaccessible.

The stakes are especially high because reduced language access could increase the very forms of enumeration that are least capable of replacing a direct response. A household that cannot communicate with an enumerator may be completed through a neighbor, landlord, administrative record, or imputation. Those methods may produce an occupancy determination or basic headcount while missing household members, relationships, and self-identified characteristics.

Census should therefore issue a public reconciliation of the Operational Plan and the Commerce DAO. That explanation should identify which decennial activities qualify for exceptions, who approved them, how long the approval lasts, and whether it covers the complete language program across response, communications, partnerships, and fieldwork.

A temporary or discretionary exception would not provide the same operational certainty as a clear commitment. Translation contracts, telephone systems, field recruitment, community partnerships, and questionnaire testing must be planned years in advance. Census cannot wait until shortly before enumeration to determine whether the language services assumed in its design are permissible.

Current commitment

The Operational Plan assumes translated questionnaires and supporting materials, multilingual online and telephone response, and translated communications across several formats.

New policy conflict

The Commerce English-language DAO creates a department-wide presumption favoring English and requires Census to justify multilingual services through an exception process.

Open policy question

Census has not publicly explained whether the decennial census qualifies for an exception or which questionnaire, communications, partnership, telephone, mailing, and field services that exception would protect.

Credible risk

Census preserves a limited number of translated questionnaires while reducing bilingual mailings, multilingual telephone assistance, partnership materials, or field-language capacity. The census would remain multilingual on paper but become substantially less accessible in practice.

Why advocates should care

Language services operate as an interconnected system. Weakening any one part can prevent households from finding, trusting, completing, or receiving assistance with the census. Without a clear exception covering the full operation, people with limited English proficiency may lose their ability to participate directly and be pushed toward less accurate forms of enumeration.

C. Why Language Access Is a Data-Quality Issue

Language access is often treated as a matter of customer service or communications. For the census, it is also a basic data-quality safeguard. If people cannot understand the questionnaire, the residence rules, or the available response options, Census is less likely to receive a complete and accurate account of the household.

The risk is not limited to whether a person can translate individual words. Census questions rely on concepts that may be unfamiliar even to fluent English speakers. Respondents must determine who usually lives and sleeps at the address, how to count children in shared-custody arrangements, whether to include someone staying temporarily, and how to report college students, people in institutions, or relatives living elsewhere. Clear explanations are necessary to apply those rules correctly.

Without direct language support, respondents may misunderstand who should be included. A household may leave out a young child, a relative staying at their home temporarily, a person without formal status at the address, or someone who is away on Census Day but should still be counted there. It may also include a former resident or someone who should be counted at a college, group quarters facility, or another home.

These mistakes can produce both omissions and duplications. They can also affect where a person is counted, how the household is structured, and whether Census identifies separate families or housing units sharing an address. A translated questionnaire without translated residence instructions may therefore be insufficient.

Household rosters are especially vulnerable. A respondent who understands only part of the form may provide the total number of residents but fail to complete person-level information for everyone. They may list the adults most closely connected to the lease, mortgage, or benefits case while overlooking children, unrelated residents, or another family sharing the home.

Language barriers can also lead to errors in relationships and characteristics. Terms such as spouse, unmarried partner, foster child, roommate, or “other nonrelative” may not translate neatly without context. Race and ethnicity categories may require explanation, particularly when federal classifications differ from the identities or terminology commonly used in another language. A respondent may select the closest available option without understanding how Census intends the answer to be used.

In some households, a child or another family member may be asked to interpret. Family members often provide essential help, but informal interpretation is not a substitute for a response mode designed in the respondent’s language. A child may not understand census terminology, may simplify sensitive questions, or may feel uncomfortable asking an adult about age, relationship, race, sex, citizenship, or housing tenure.

The same problem can arise when a neighbor, landlord, service provider, or community volunteer helps complete the form. The interpreter may not know every person in the household or may unintentionally change an answer while explaining it. Residents may also be less willing to disclose sensitive or complicated information in front of someone they know.

Reliance on informal interpreters can affect privacy as well as accuracy. A person should not have to disclose household relationships, immigration concerns, or personal characteristics to a child, neighbor, or acquaintance simply to participate in the census. Some residents may skip questions or avoid responding altogether rather than seek that help.

Multilingual internet and telephone response can reduce these problems by allowing people to answer directly and privately. If those services are narrowed, self-response is likely to become less accessible even where translated guides remain available. A written guide requires the respondent to move between documents and determine how translated instructions correspond to an English questionnaire. That process is more burdensome and more prone to error than completing a fully translated instrument.

Telephone assistance is particularly important for people who speak a language more comfortably than they read it. It also allows respondents to ask follow-up questions about residence rules, confidentiality, and unusual household circumstances. A prerecorded message or limited interpretation service does not provide the same opportunity as a trained interviewer who can complete the questionnaire in the respondent’s language.

Lower multilingual self-response would have consequences throughout the census operation. More households would enter Nonresponse Follow-up, where Census would need enough bilingual enumerators and interpreter capacity to recover the missing responses. If that capacity is not available, field interviews may be incomplete or may depend on another household member, a neighbor, or a building manager to interpret.

Some households may then be counted through proxies. A neighbor or landlord may know that a unit is occupied but not know the names, ages, relationships, or race and ethnicity of everyone living there. Proxy responses can therefore produce a basic population estimate while losing the detail that direct respondents could have supplied.

Other households may be completed through administrative records or in-office enumeration. Those records may identify some residents but omit recent immigrants, young children, temporarily housed relatives, or people with limited connections to government programs. They may also contain old addresses or incomplete demographic characteristics.

Reduced language access can therefore create a compounding problem. The people who lose the ability to respond directly may be the same people for whom administrative data provide the weakest substitute. A household that could have supplied an accurate roster in its preferred language may instead be represented through records that identify only the most formally documented residents.

The effects may be hidden in national response or accuracy measures. A language community can experience a substantial decline in participation without producing a large change in the national rate. Broad racial or ethnic categories may also conceal poorer results for smaller groups that use particular languages.

Census should therefore evaluate language access as part of its quality program. It should measure not only the number of translated materials distributed, but whether households using each language produce complete rosters, accurate residence information, and low rates of item nonresponse. Results should also show how often households move from multilingual self-response to field follow-up, proxy collection, or administrative enumeration.

Testing should compare fully translated response modes with language guides, interpreter-assisted interviews, and English-only instruments. It should examine whether differences appear in household size, young-child coverage, relationship reporting, race and ethnicity detail, and the need for later edits or imputation.

Census should also assess language access across the full response pathway. A questionnaire may be available in a person’s language while the mailing that announces it, the website used to verify it, or the telephone menu needed to reach assistance remains in English. A program should not be considered accessible merely because translation exists somewhere in the system.

The central principle is that language assistance should make it possible for residents to answer for themselves. Census receives better data when people can understand the questions, apply the residence rules, protect their privacy, and describe their households without relying on an intermediary.

Current commitment

The Operational Plan assumes translated questionnaires and materials, multilingual online and telephone response, and language support across communications and field operations.

Credible risk

If those services are reduced, households may provide incomplete rosters, misunderstand residence rules, rely on informal interpreters, or fail to respond directly.

Why advocates should care

Reduced language access would not simply lower participation among people with limited English proficiency. It could increase omissions, placement errors, proxy reporting, and administrative enumeration in communities for which those substitute methods may be least accurate.

D. Legal and Administrative Questions

The legal effect of the Commerce English-language DAO is not as simple as saying that the President ordered federal agencies to operate only in English. Executive Order 14224 designated English as the official language and revoked the earlier executive order on access for people with limited English proficiency. But it also stated explicitly that nothing in the order required an agency to change its existing services or stop producing documents and products in other languages. Agency heads were directed to make the decisions they considered necessary to fulfill their missions and serve the public efficiently.

The Commerce Department therefore had choices about how to implement the executive order. Its decision to create a department-wide presumption favoring English, subject to limited exceptions, was not the only approach the presidential order permitted. That makes the Department’s own legal analysis, operational evidence, and decision-making process especially important.

The Relationship Between the DAO and the Executive Order

The executive order establishes English as the official language, but it preserves substantial agency discretion. It does not prohibit multilingual questionnaires, telephone assistance, webpages, field interviews, or public information. It also preserves authorities granted to agencies by statute and requires implementation consistent with applicable law.

The Attorney General’s subsequent guidance encourages agencies to reduce multilingual services that are not required by law or necessary to their missions. At the same time, it recognizes that agencies may continue multilingual services they consider mission critical and directs agencies to determine when such assistance remains necessary to fulfill their responsibilities.

For Census, the central question should therefore be functional rather than rhetorical: Are multilingual services necessary to conduct an accurate decennial enumeration?

The evidence discussed in the preceding sections strongly suggests that they are. Millions of households used multilingual response modes in 2020. Language support affects whether people respond directly, whether household rosters are complete, and whether Census must rely on proxies or administrative records. These are core enumeration outcomes, not incidental customer-service benefits.

Commerce should explain how it determined that the DAO’s exception structure is consistent with the discretion preserved by the executive order. It should also explain whether the constitutionally required decennial census qualifies as a mission-based exception and whether that exception covers the complete language program rather than a small set of translated documents.

A narrow exception could be inadequate even if it technically preserves some non-English services. For example, allowing a translated online questionnaire while eliminating bilingual mailings, multilingual telephone response, official partnership materials, or field-language assistance would make the questionnaire much harder to find and use. The legal and operational analysis should consider the language program as an interconnected system.

Title VI and Other Language-Access Obligations

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance. It continues to apply even though Executive Order 13166 has been revoked. The revocation changed executive-branch language-access policy; it did not repeal Title VI itself.

Title VI’s direct application to the Census Bureau’s own decennial operations is not straightforward. The statute principally governs recipients of federal financial assistance, while the decennial census is a federally conducted activity. Executive Order 13166 had separately directed federal agencies to provide meaningful access in their own programs. That executive requirement is no longer in place.

The Department of Justice has also adopted a much narrower interpretation of Title VI language obligations. Its current guidance states that Title VI prohibits intentional national-origin discrimination rather than policies that merely have a disparate impact. It also argues that language classifications do not automatically constitute national-origin classifications, although it recognizes that language can be used as a proxy for intentional discrimination in some circumstances.

These changes weaken one possible legal basis for requiring multilingual federal services. But they do not establish that Census is free to disregard the predictable effects of an English-dominant enumeration.

A policy could still raise Title VI or equal-protection concerns if language were used intentionally to disadvantage a particular national-origin community. Commerce recipients and federally assisted programs may also continue to have obligations under Title VI, their governing statutes, regulations, or funding agreements. The precise requirements may differ across programs and activities.

More importantly for the decennial census, language access is tied to separate constitutional and statutory responsibilities. Census does not provide a discretionary benefit that residents can simply choose not to use. It must count the population, including people who do not speak English well. Even where civil rights law does not create an individual right to a particular translated service, Commerce must still consider whether eliminating that service prevents Census from fulfilling its own legal mission.

The Secretary’s Discretion

Both the executive order and the Census Act give the Secretary of Commerce substantial discretion. Executive Order 14224 allows agency heads to continue multilingual services where they consider them necessary to fulfill their missions. Title 13 authorizes the Secretary to conduct the decennial census in the form and content the Secretary determines and to obtain the information necessary to carry it out.

That discretion cuts in both directions. It permits the Secretary to preserve multilingual census operations despite the government-wide preference for English. It also gives the Secretary authority to determine the specific languages, response modes, and forms of assistance Census will offer.

But discretion does not mean that the choice can be disconnected from evidence. The Supreme Court has held that census methods must bear a reasonable relationship to accomplishing an actual enumeration. Census methods also remain subject to statutory requirements and ordinary administrative-law review.

If Census’s own research shows that translated questionnaires, bilingual mailings, multilingual telephone assistance, and bilingual enumerators materially improve response and accuracy, the Secretary should account for that evidence before restricting them. A decision based only on a general policy preference for English could be difficult to reconcile with the Secretary’s responsibility to choose methods that support an accurate count.

The Secretary should therefore make a written determination addressing:

• which multilingual services are necessary to the decennial mission;

• which services qualify for an exception under the DAO;

• how any reductions would affect self-response and data quality;

• whether less restrictive or less costly alternatives are available; and

• how the decision is consistent with Census’s constitutional and statutory responsibilities.

That analysis should be completed early enough to guide contracting, testing, recruitment, questionnaire design, and community partnerships. An exception approved shortly before enumeration would not repair years of planning conducted under uncertainty.

Census’s Constitutional and Statutory Mission

The Constitution requires an actual enumeration of the population, and the Fourteenth Amendment requires representation to be allocated by counting the whole number of persons in each state. Congress has assigned responsibility for conducting that census to the Secretary of Commerce.

Neither the Constitution nor Title 13 expressly requires Census to offer questionnaires in a particular number of languages. There is therefore no simple rule that an English-only census would automatically violate the Enumeration Clause.

But the absence of an explicit translation requirement does not end the analysis. Census must choose methods reasonably designed to count the population. A language policy that predictably prevents millions of people from responding directly, increases household omissions, and produces differential undercounts could be relevant to whether the overall design reasonably fulfills that obligation.

The legal concern would become stronger if Commerce ignored clear operational evidence. Census already knows that people use multilingual response services at substantial scale. It also knows that language barriers are associated with difficulty interviewing, persuading, and accurately enumerating households. Restricting those services without studying the consequences could suggest that the Department subordinated census accuracy to a policy preference unrelated to the enumeration itself.

The strongest legal challenge might therefore focus less on a freestanding constitutional right to translated materials and more on whether Commerce made a reasoned census-methodology decision. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, reviewable agency action can be set aside when it is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or contrary to law. A court reviewing a final implementation decision could examine whether the Department considered the relevant evidence, explained its choice, and addressed important consequences and alternatives.

The implications would also depend on scale. A small adjustment to a rarely used translation may present little legal concern. A department-wide policy that eliminates principal response modes for millions of households and contributes to a substantial differential undercount would present a more serious question.

Scientific-Integrity and Administrative Process

The DAO also raises questions about how Commerce reached its decision. Department rules for issuing DAOs require coordination with operating units that have a significant interest in the subject. They also require DAOs to be technically accurate and consistent with law and regulation. The standard clearance process includes the Office of Inspector General, Office of Budget, Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, and Office of General Counsel.

For a directive with potentially significant effects on the decennial census, Census Bureau participation should have been central. The relevant expertise includes language-program operations, questionnaire design, field enumeration, response behavior, statistical quality, civil rights, communications, and partnership engagement.

Commerce should disclose whether Census experts were consulted and what evidence they provided. Important questions include:

• Did Census evaluate how the policy would affect response and coverage?

• Did the Language Program assess which planned services could continue?

• Were field, communications, and partnership experts consulted?

• Did Census leadership recommend an exception for the decennial census?

• Were differing technical opinions documented and preserved?

• Did the Department evaluate the costs created by lower self-response and increased fieldwork, rather than considering only the costs of translation?

Commerce’s Scientific Integrity DAO is also relevant. It applies broadly to the conduct, management, communication, and use of science and scientific evidence. It states that officials responsible for related policies should involve departmental or operating-unit scientific-integrity officials, where possible, when developing policies that affect scientific integrity.

A department-wide language policy is not itself a scientific study. But its application to Census could override or constrain scientifically developed enumeration methods. If Census research supports multilingual operations and the DAO restricts those methods without considering that evidence, the decision raises a scientific-integrity concern even if it was issued as an administrative directive.

Commerce should explain whether its Scientific Integrity Official, the Census Bureau’s statistical experts, and the Bureau’s scientific-integrity processes were involved. It should also release any operational analysis showing how the directive will affect data quality.

Public notice and comment may not have been legally required for the DAO itself. The Administrative Procedure Act generally exempts interpretive rules, policy statements, and rules of agency organization or procedure from its ordinary notice-and-comment requirements. But that does not mean the Department should implement major changes to a constitutionally required statistical operation without transparency or external input.

Specific decisions applying the DAO to the census may require separate OMB review, information-collection approval, questionnaire testing, privacy analysis, procurement changes, or formal census-content decisions. Those later actions may provide additional points for public scrutiny and legal review.

At minimum, Commerce and Census should make public:

• the legal analysis supporting application of the DAO to the decennial census;

• the Census Bureau’s request for, or assessment of, any mission-based exception;

• the scientific and operational evidence considered;

• the offices that participated in the DAO’s review;

• any dissenting or alternative recommendations;

• the language services that will continue or end; and

• the expected effects on response, fieldwork, cost, and differential coverage.

The executive order left Commerce room to preserve multilingual census operations. Whether the Department uses that discretion should be judged against the Census Bureau’s mission and evidence, not against a general assumption that translation is unnecessary whenever English is the official language.

Current legal baseline

Executive Order 14224 does not require Census to discontinue multilingual services. It allows the Secretary to preserve services necessary to fulfill the Department’s mission.

Open legal and administrative questions

Commerce has not publicly explained how the DAO applies to the decennial census, whether Census qualifies for a mission-based exception, what scientific and operational evidence was considered, or whether Census experts and scientific-integrity officials participated in the decision.

Credible risk

Commerce applies a general presumption favoring English without adequately considering Census’s evidence that multilingual services are necessary for direct response and accurate enumeration.

Why advocates should care

The legality and defensibility of the policy may depend less on the declaration that English is the official language than on the choices Commerce makes under the discretion the executive order preserved. Those choices could determine whether millions of people retain a meaningful opportunity to participate directly in the census.

E. Worst-Case Scenario

The worst-case scenario is not simply that Census produces fewer translated materials. It is that language access is weakened across the entire response system at once.

In this scenario, Census questionnaires, telephone assistance, online tools, official webpages, mailings, and outreach materials are available only in English or in a sharply reduced number of languages. Multilingual support may still exist in isolated forms, but residents cannot move through the full census process in a language they understand.

A household might receive an English-only mailing directing it to an English-language website. The questionnaire may be difficult to navigate, telephone menus may not offer an accessible language option, and official explanations of residence rules or confidentiality may be unavailable. Even where a translated guide exists, residents may have to move back and forth between that guide and an English questionnaire without being able to ask questions or verify that they are interpreting the form correctly.

Community organizations would likely try to fill the gap. They might translate instructions, produce videos, hold assistance events, or help residents complete the form. Those efforts could be enormously valuable, but they would not provide a reliable substitute for an official Census language program.

Organizations would have different resources, translation practices, and levels of access to Census experts. Some communities might receive high-quality assistance, while others receive little or none. Key concepts such as usual residence, household member, unmarried partner, or living without payment of rent might be translated differently across organizations. Materials could become outdated as Census changes its procedures, and residents may have difficulty distinguishing official guidance from well-intentioned local interpretation.

The burden would also shift unfairly onto organizations already serving communities with substantial needs. Instead of focusing on outreach and trust-building, partners would have to recreate basic federal materials that Census itself had chosen not to provide. They might be asked to explain legal protections, questionnaire instructions, and operational changes without authoritative translations or timely answers from the Bureau.

Residents who cannot obtain reliable help may respond incompletely or not respond at all. Some households may list only the people most visible in formal records. Others may omit young children, relatives staying temporarily, or people whose presence at the address feels sensitive. Respondents may misunderstand where college students, people in institutions, or children in shared-custody arrangements should be counted.

Some households may rely on children, neighbors, landlords, or service providers to interpret. That can reduce privacy and make people less willing to disclose complete information about household relationships, immigration concerns, or personal characteristics. Others may decide that responding is too difficult or uncertain.

Lower self-response would send more households into field follow-up. But if the same policy also reduces bilingual staffing and interpreter support, enumerators may be unable to recover the missing information. A visit may establish that someone lives at the address without producing a complete roster or accurate characteristics.

Census would then rely more heavily on proxies, administrative records, and in-office enumeration. Those methods may identify property owners, taxpayers, benefit recipients, or other formally documented residents while missing recent immigrants, young children, temporary household members, and people in informal housing arrangements.

This creates a particularly damaging cycle. Reduced language access prevents people from answering directly. Their absence from the direct-response data is then treated as a problem to be solved through administrative records, even though those records may be least complete for the same communities.

The resulting errors may be difficult to see. National response rates could remain relatively high while particular language communities experience steep declines. Administrative enumeration may produce plausible household counts that conceal omitted residents, outdated addresses, or missing characteristics. If results are not reported by language and enumeration method, Census may describe the operation as successful while entire communities receive substantially lower-quality enumeration.

The policy could also cause lasting damage to trust. Residents may conclude that the government did not intend for them to participate directly. Community organizations may remember being asked to compensate for a federal decision without adequate resources or authority. Those experiences could make later Census outreach and other federal statistical collections harder, even if language services are restored.

This outcome is avoidable. Census can preserve multilingual response across modes, produce consistent official translations, fund and support community partnerships, and maintain bilingual field and telephone capacity. The central safeguard is to treat language access as part of enumeration itself rather than as an optional service that outside organizations can recreate.

Worst-case scenario

Census limits questionnaires, telephone service, digital tools, mailings, and official outreach materials to English. Community organizations attempt to fill the gap with unofficial translations that vary in quality and reach. Self-response falls among people with limited English proficiency, field follow-up cannot fully recover the missing information, and Census increasingly relies on proxies and administrative records that provide a less complete and accurate picture of those households.

Why advocates should care

An English-only operation would not merely make the census harder to use. It could determine whose own answers enter the census and whose households are instead reconstructed through other people or outside records.

F. Advocacy and Research

The language program assumed in the Operational Plan will require years of planning, testing, contracting, recruitment, and community engagement. Advocates should not wait until the final list of supported languages is announced to determine whether the Commerce English-language DAO has already narrowed the program.

The immediate goal should be to establish that multilingual services are part of the method Census uses to conduct an accurate enumeration. Research can document which services improve response and data quality. Legal and policy work can clarify the authority to preserve them. Coalition and congressional advocacy can help ensure that Census has both permission and resources to implement them.

1. Obtain a Formal Census Interpretation of the DAO

Census and Commerce should provide a written explanation of how the English-language DAO applies to the decennial census. A general statement that the Department will comply with both the directive and applicable law would not resolve the operational questions.

The interpretation should identify:

• whether the decennial census qualifies for a mission-based exception;

• who has authority to approve and modify that exception;

• which response, communications, partnership, and field activities it covers;

• whether the exception extends through the full 2030 Census cycle; and

• whether individual language services require separate approval.

The explanation should also address the difference between a translated product and an accessible response system. Preserving a limited set of questionnaires would not be sufficient if households cannot understand the mailing, reach multilingual telephone assistance, verify that a website is legitimate, or communicate with an enumerator.

Advocates should seek this interpretation early enough to guide the 2028 Dress Rehearsal and related procurement decisions. Census cannot test a multilingual operation reliably while its authority to build that operation remains unresolved.

2. Identify the Legal Basis for Continued Language Support

Advocates should develop a clear legal analysis showing why the executive order permits, and Census’s mission strongly supports, continued multilingual operations.

That analysis should begin with the discretion preserved by Executive Order 14224. The order did not require agencies to eliminate existing translated services and allows agency heads to continue services needed to fulfill their missions. Census therefore has authority to determine that language assistance is necessary to conduct an accurate enumeration.

The analysis should also consider:

• the Enumeration Clause and the requirement to count the whole number of persons in each state;

• the Secretary’s responsibility under Title 13 to select methods reasonably suited to conducting the census;

• the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirement that consequential agency decisions consider relevant evidence and provide a reasoned explanation;

• Title VI and other civil rights protections where applicable; and

• program-specific statutes, regulations, or agreements that may create additional language obligations.

The strongest argument may not be that every household has an absolute legal right to every service in its preferred language. It may be that Commerce cannot rationally restrict proven enumeration methods without considering the predictable consequences for response, accuracy, and differential undercounts.

Legal research should also identify when a challenge would become reviewable, what records would be needed, and which remedies would remain practical. An early challenge to a final language plan would present different options from litigation after questionnaires have been printed and field systems finalized.

3. Quantify the Effects of the 2020 Language Program

The 2020 Census provides an important evidence base, but the number of multilingual responses alone does not capture the program’s full value. Census and independent researchers should examine how language services affected both participation and the quality of the information collected.

Research should assess:

• use of each multilingual response mode;

• the effects of bilingual mailings on self-response;

• completion and item-nonresponse rates by language;

• differences in household-roster completeness;

• use of telephone assistance and bilingual enumerators;

• movement from self-response into field follow-up; and

• reliance on proxies, administrative records, and imputation where language support was limited.

The analysis should compare language guides with fully translated questionnaires and direct-language telephone interviews. It should also examine whether translated communications helped residents recognize legitimate Census materials and reach the correct response option.

Results should be disaggregated by language, geography, housing type, and other relevant characteristics. A service used by a relatively small population nationally may be essential in particular cities, neighborhoods, tribal areas, or refugee communities.

Researchers should also estimate the operational costs avoided through multilingual self-response. Translation requires investment, but reduced language services may lead to more field visits, longer interviews, greater proxy use, and more difficult processing. A complete cost analysis should include those downstream consequences rather than treating translation only as an added expense.

4. Build a Language-Access Coalition Early

Organizations concerned with language access should organize before Census and Commerce finalize their decisions. The coalition should include immigrant-serving organizations, civil rights groups, tribal governments, disability advocates, local governments, libraries, language-service experts, and organizations rooted in specific language communities.

The coalition should develop a shared position on the minimum features of an accessible 2030 Census. Those priorities might include:

• multilingual internet and telephone response;

• official translated questionnaires and instructions;

• bilingual or multilingual mailings where data show a need;

• translated outreach and partnership materials;

• bilingual field recruitment and reliable interpreter support; and

• additional assistance for locally concentrated languages outside the national program.

Community organizations should help define quality, not merely request a larger number of translations. They can identify terminology that is confusing, languages for which written materials alone are insufficient, and communities that may not appear clearly in national ACS estimates.

The coalition should also address resources. Census should fund language support as part of its core operation, and philanthropy should help community organizations participate in planning and testing without expecting them to replace official federal services.

A shared position will be especially valuable if Commerce proposes partial compromises. Advocates should be prepared to explain why preserving one translated questionnaire does not compensate for eliminating the mailing, telephone line, field support, or trusted materials residents need to use it.

5. Seek Congressional Direction and Appropriations Protection

Congress can reduce uncertainty by directing Census to maintain multilingual operations and providing the resources required to do so. Oversight should begin before final content and language decisions are locked.

Relevant committees can ask Commerce and Census to explain:

• how the DAO applies to the decennial census;

• whether Census requested a mission-based exception;

• which 2020 language services will continue;

• how language reductions would affect response and field costs; and

• whether Census experts recommended a different approach.

Appropriations language could require Census to maintain multilingual response and assistance at a level supported by demonstrated need, prohibit funds from being used to eliminate core language services without prior notice, or require public reporting before material changes are made. Congress could also direct independent review by GAO or the Commerce Inspector General.

Funding protections matter because formal permission alone will not preserve the program. Census needs resources for translation, testing, telephone systems, field recruitment, interpreter services, communications, and partnerships. Budget reductions could narrow language access even if the DAO permits it.

Congress should also require timely disclosure. If Commerce changes the languages or response modes planned for 2030, it should explain the decision, the evidence considered, the expected data-quality effects, and the alternatives rejected. That information should become public while corrective action remains possible.

The advocacy objective should be broader than preserving a list of translated products. The goal is to protect an end-to-end system that allows people to recognize the census, understand what it asks, respond privately, seek assistance, and communicate with field staff in a language they understand.

The central principle is straightforward: language access should be evaluated according to whether it helps Census count people accurately, not according to a general preference for English-language government. Where multilingual services materially improve direct participation, they should be treated as part of the constitutional enumeration and funded, tested, and protected accordingly.

Where to look: See the 2030 Census Operational Plan, particularly section 2.2, “Hard to Count,” pp. 13–15; section 3.2.1, “Self-Response,” pp. 29–30; section 3.2.6, “Communications, Partnerships, and Engagement,” pp. 40–41; section 3.2.8, “Language Program,” pp. 42–43; and section 3.2.11, “Census Questionnaire Assistance,” pp. 45–46. Together, these sections describe how Census plans to identify language needs, provide translated questionnaires and materials, support multilingual response, and work with community partners.

For evidence from the last census, see the 2020 Census Language Program Operational Assessment, which reports the languages and response modes offered, use of bilingual mailings, and the number of responses and field interviews completed in languages other than English. The Bureau’s future language-selection research, test plans, procurement materials, and detailed operational plans should clarify which services will remain available for 2030.

For the legal and policy conflict, see Executive Order 14224, “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States”; Commerce DAO 201-46, “Designating English as the Official Language for Department Programs and Activities”; and current Department of Justice materials on Title VI and language access. Advocates should watch especially for a formal Census interpretation of the DAO, a mission-based exception, and a language-by-response-mode plan covering questionnaires, telephone assistance, mailings, outreach materials, field staffing, and interpreter support.

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