EPIC to Congress: Suspend the Census Citizenship Question

In advance of a hearing on the 2020 Census, EPIC has sent a statement to the House Oversight Committee urging Congress to require the Census Bureau to remove the citizenship question from the 2020 census. EPIC told the Committee that the Census Bureau failed to complete privacy impact assessments required by law. "Congress made clear that data collection simply could not occur without the completion of these assessments" EPIC explained. In EPIC v. Commerce, a case now before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, EPIC recently filed an opening brief to block the Census Bureau from collecting citizenship data in the 2020 Census. The Bureau concedes that it must complete the impact assessments but has so far failed to do so. EPIC warned the federal appeals court that "major privacy risks have not been addressed by the agency."