The Trump administration has nixed plans to include sexual orientation and gender identity in the 2020 Census, a request made by congressional Democrats and LGBTQ advocates last year in an attempt to construct a better picture of the country’s increasingly complex family and sexual dynamics and to better craft laws tailored to improve the situations of LGBT people, reports the Washington Times.

Congressional Democrats appeared to have scored a victory Tuesday morning, when the Census Bureau released a list of data categories it will collect for the 2020 Census and the American Community Survey, and said “sexual orientation and gender identity” were new additions.

Just a few hours later, the Census released an updated list striking the sexual orientation proposal.

A spokesman for the bureau said they had been asked by members of Congress to include the questions, and had been studying it — but determined there was no “federal need” for that information to be collected.

“The Subjects Planned for the 2020 Census and American Community Survey report released today inadvertently listed sexual orientation and gender identity as a proposed topic in the appendix. This topic is not being proposed to Congress for the 2020 Census or American Community Survey,” the bureau said in a statement.

“Our goal is a complete and accurate census,” Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson.

“In planning for the 2020 Census, the Census Bureau has focused on improving its address list by using imagery, finding ways to increase household self-response, leveraging resources inside and outside the government, and making it easier and more efficient for census takers to complete their work,” the director said.

Meghan Maury, Criminal and Economic Justice Project Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, released the following statement:



“Today, the Trump Administration has taken yet another step to deny LGBTQ people freedom, justice, and equity, by choosing to exclude us from the 2020 Census and American Community Survey. LGBTQ people are not counted on the Census—no data is collected on sexual orientation or gender identity. Information from these surveys helps the government to enforce federal laws like the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Housing Act and to determine how to allocate resources like housing supports and food stamps. If the government doesn’t know how many LGBTQ people live in a community, how can it do its job to ensure we’re getting fair and adequate access to the rights, protections and services we need? We call on President Trump and his Administration to begin collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data on the American Community Survey as soon as possible and urge Congress to conduct oversight hearings to reveal why the Administration made the last-minute decision not to collect data on LGBTQ people.”

Family selfie! #memorialday #gaydads #lakewylie @somefamilies #carolina #family #sotired #needaloe A post shared by Jerry L (@eandjspop) on May 25, 2015 at 4:26pm PDT

The Times adds:



The United Kingdom is also pondering whether to add gender identity to its next national headcount in 2021, saying that data is needed. But in a 2016 report the British Office of National Statistics said there were still many “challenges and difficulties” in collecting the information. British officials were using focus groups and a national opinion survey to test whether the country was open to such questions, and how to go about asking them.

h/t: out