This ACS Awareness Month, the ACS Needs Defending

Every August, we celebrate the American Community Survey (ACS), the U.S. Census Bureau’s ongoing collection of detailed data from a sample of U.S. households. We typically observe ACS Awareness Month by amplifying the amazing uses of ACS data, from helping allocate federal resources to local communities, to enabling business planning, to local municipalities upgrading infrastructure, to enforcing civil rights laws and protecting people from discrimination. This year – more than ever before – the ACS is under attack, joining 337 other federal datasets that have been doctored since the start of the current administration. This ACS Awareness Month, we are highlighting six key ways that ACS data is being degraded:

1. Less privacy and worse data. A June 2026 U.S. Department of Commerce order – DAO 216-26 – ostensibly addresses data confidentiality concerns; however, advocates warned that this order will “either be less privacy for our personal information, or less usable data, or both.” In an incomplete attempt to prevent ACS data from being personally identifiable, the order allows coarsening and suppression of data but disallows noise infusion: in short it makes it harder to have granular data on a race/ethnicity or geographic basis. If ACS data were analogous to a class photo at school, noise infusion pixelates faces, so no one is identifiable but they still look like people. Coarsening pulls the camera back until everyone is visible as a class not as individuals, and suppression crops people out of the picture. The bureau stated that it will gradually transition the ACS to meet this order by 2029 and recently announced that it is “seeking DAO-compliant solutions to allow the release of the [2025] ACS 1-year tables later this year” which has delayed, for an undetermined time, the release that traditionally occurs in September.
2. Attacking diversity and equity. Earlier this year, the bureau abandoned a long-awaited plan to include an updated question about race and ethnicity (Statistical Policy Directive No. 15, or SPD 15) in the 2027 ACS. The updated question would better capture respondents’ self-identification with a combined race and ethnicity question rather than two separate questions. Advocates have called out this effort for what it is: another attack on inclusion and equity from this administration.
3. Silencing expert voices. In June 2025, the Department of Commerce terminated several key census and ACS-related advisory committees: the 2030 Census Advisory Committee, Bureau of the Census Scientific Advisory Committee, and Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations. The Leadership Conference took the lead, writing a sign-on letter on concerns with these terminations, citing “[it] threatens the bureau’s ability to collect accurate, comprehensive demographic […] data.”
4. Uncertain and inadequate funding. Funding the ACS, the 2030 Census and other Census Bureau surveys remains at risk. The relevant appropriations committee has approved funding at a level lower than requested by the administration and inadequate “as we enter the stage where funding has historically ramped up in order to adequately prepare,” stated The Leadership Conference in a May 2026 letter.
5. Voluntary response leads to inaccurate data. Responding to the ACS is required by law under titles 13 and 18 of the U.S. Code. However, there are persistent efforts to make responding voluntary for the decennial census and ACS. According to the Census Bureau, making the ACS voluntary would “reduce the self-response rates significantly,” risking data that no longer fully reflects the people who call our country home and the resources we all depend on.
6. Cherry picking who counts and who doesn’t. Continuing a long trend of declining ACS response, the administration’s persistent attacks on communities of color and immigrants only serve to “chill” the communities’ receptivity to responding to government surveys. This is expected to exacerbate the significant decline in responses seen in the last decade. 

These threats will make ACS data increasingly inaccurate, unreliable and incomplete. Because the ACS is time-bound, this damage compounds: every year collected under degraded conditions is a year that cannot be undone, leaving permanent gaps in the data advocates rely on to show change over time. Those most impacted include small and rural communities as well as immigrant and diverse populations. ACS data – long relied upon by institutions and advocates alike – will no longer be a trusted source of information about our country’s people.

While it is important to promote and build awareness of the ACS overall, advocates must also be aware of the challenges to the integrity of the survey and we are committed to fighting for an accurate count. Census Counts’ ACS Awareness Month website provides information, resources and programming for stakeholders to use in their outreach. Additionally, Census Counts will soon launch an ACS Ambassador program to provide the tools and support advocates need to protect the mission of the ACS. Join us and sign up for the ACS Ambassadors Listserv to be the first to hear when this program launches.