Oh, the government and its registries
Federal lawsuit challenges constitutionality of the American Community Survey
It might not have been delivered to your home yet—if not, it likely will be at some point—but, like precise clockwork in a fascist state, the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) arrives at randomly picked homes every month.
It has lots of questions about your life. It’s just a little survey, progressives say. No biggie, and it helps the government identify and help underserved communities. What’s the harm?
The harm is plenty. For one thing, the ACS is a compelled and unconstitutional invasion of privacy. Not only does the survey pose a series of highly personal questions—sexual orientation and gender identity have been added—those selected to answer them have no choice but to do so, for the survey is compelled by federal law. The Census Bureau can levy fines, and refusal to participate could cost a person up to $5,000.
What’s more, the questions have to be answered for every household member. About 3.5 million people receive the survey each year on a rolling, random basis. That’s why, if you haven’t received your survey yet, you likely will at some point.
Besides its constitutionality, it is yet one more attempt by the government to create a registry of its citizens, a registry containing valuable information for the government in case said government decides it needs to “find,” “monitor,” or take action against certain groups. The reason government registries are so dangerous is that they incentivize abuse: Individuals cease being equal individuals and become labels in a subset, data points to be analyzed and manipulated. Indeed, why collect so much data on Americans—private citizens not under any suspicion of wrongdoing—unless you believe that someday the government may need that data to target certain classes of citizens?
Whatever reason that may be, it’s wrong by its very definition to collect it coercively. Government registries are always problematic because they are just one change in administration away from being abused—if that. And the ACS may be the most egregious of all because it is compiling extraordinarily personal data on millions of Americans that can be used for nefarious as well as productive purposes.
The controversy over the ACS has been simmering for well over a decade, though conservatives have not been able to do anything about it. As far back as 2009 Republican lawmakers tried to kill it, and the House actually voted in 2012 to do so. Later, Republican lawmakers—including Kentucky’s U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and then Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota—introduced legislation to make it optional. All those efforts failed, and, wouldn’t you know, after Trump was elected, and Republicans suddenly controlled the House and Senate, somehow all that conservative opposition to the survey disappeared.
Now, a couple of citizens—Maureen Murphy of the state of Washington and John Huddleston of California—have filed a class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the survey. It is long overdue.
In their lawsuit, Murphy and Huddleston, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, underscore the survey’s intrusiveness:
Unlike the decennial Census, the American Community Survey is conducted every year and asks detailed and personal questions such as the person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, fertility history, marital status, and divorce history. It asks about private health information, including the effect of medical and psychological conditions on the individual’s daily activities. It asks how much taxes and utility bills the household pays. It even asks how many beds, cars, and washing machines the household has. The American Community Survey contains about 100 such questions.
And, the complaint states, people who refuse to answer this detailed questionnaire—which number in the thousands—are subject to fines of up to $5,000.
According to the complaint, Census Bureau agents visited Murphy’s house at least three times in December 2021, and sent her at least two letters, in which they told Murphy she was required by U.S. law to answer the ACS. Similarly, a Census Bureau agent visited Huddleston’s house at least once in January 2022 and sent at least one letter to his house, stating the same thing.
Among the information the government wanted was their “race”; each household member’s name, gender, age, and race, and the household members’ relationships with each other; the house’s description, year built, move-in date, acreage of land, number of rooms, and number of bedrooms; whether the house had hot and cold running water, a bathtub or shower, a sink with a faucet, a stove or range, a refrigerator, cellphones or landlines, and a desktop, laptop, smartphones, or tablets.
The government wanted to know whether the house had internet access, and whether the occupants accessed the internet using cellular data plan, broadband, satellite, dial-up, or some other service. The bureau wanted to know the number of cars the occupants had and what fuel was used for heating, as well as “truthful dollar amounts” for electricity, gas, water and sewer, “oil, coal, kerosene, wood, etc.” bills, and any monthly condominium fee.
The government wanted to know actual dollar amounts for annual real estate taxes, fire, hazard, and flood insurance, and monthly mortgage payments and whether there was a second mortgage on the house and the dollar amount of the monthly second-mortgage payments.
The government wanted to know whether the occupants were born in the United States or elsewhere, whether they were U.S citizens, the year they came to live in the United States, the highest level of education completed, and a description of their bachelor’s degree major.
And that’s when things got really Orwellian …