New York census workers banned from asking gender questions on surveys to comply with President Trump's executive order
News 12 obtained and vetted a memo received by census workers in nine states that make up the Census Bureau's northeast region that details the changes.
More Stories
Local U.S. census workers have been ordered to stop asking people about gender identity in some surveys, as the agency tries to comply with a recent order from President Donald Trump.
News 12 obtained and vetted a memo received by census workers in nine states that make up the Census Bureau's northeast region that details the changes.
The Census Bureau ordered all employees at its northeast field office to leave out questions about gender when speaking with the approximately 200,000 crime victims for the bureau's annual crime victimization survey.
The author of the memo wrote that the reason for the sudden change is to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order, "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government."
"It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female," the executive order reads. "These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality."
The recently added — now deleted — questions in the crime victimization survey included: 'What sex were you assigned at birth?' and '[Have you experienced] prejudice or bigotry toward your gender identity, including being transgender, intersex or gender non-conforming?'
The bureau is also removing any mentions of gender from the survey, replacing each mention with "sex."
"This is like an erasure of entire groups of people," New Paltz Deputy Mayor Alexandria Wojcik said in a Zoom interview Tuesday.
Wojcik, also a vocal advocate for the Hudson Valley LGBTQ+ community, pointed out that the survey has previously shown transgender people are twice as likely to be victims of violent crime than are people who are not transgender.
She said the data have helped her shape policy to make New Paltz safer.
"It's always been this beautiful and vital thing in that way," she said. "Hateful beliefs and ideologies now are changing what this process is."
Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow at the Family Research Council, said "to get accurate results, you have to ask accurate questions," and that any government survey should keep questions simple.
She said that while some may consider gender differently, questions about gender should not be on a census survey.
"God has created us male and female," she said Tuesday over Zoom. "How someone feels about their [gender] identity isn't really relevant to whether or not they're male or female."
The census worker who shared the Jan. 31 memo with News 12 asked not to be identified to avoid any possible retaliation.
The employee expressed concern about what other measures may be taken against transgender people and other marginalized groups in other facets of government moving forward.
"There's no reason that this isn't anything other than something they're throwing against the wall," the employee said by phone Tuesday, "to see what other rights or people they can erase."
According to the memo, the Census Bureau is also prohibiting the field office staff from asking gender-related questions on surveys of people in jail.
Officials with the U.S. Census Bureau have not responded to News 12's requests for comment for this story.
