A bipartisan coalition of 18 states plus the District of Columbia, nine cities, four counties and the U.S. Conference of Mayors submitted a formal comment regarding the upcoming Census urging the Census Bureau to reconsider its decision, in a reversal of longstanding Bureau practice, to include an unnecessary citizenship question that will impair the Bureau’s essential function of counting all people in the 2020 Census. The comment was submitted by the same group that joined a lawsuit filed in May that has already survived one legal challenge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit was filed by Attorneys General of New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia. The comment explains that demanding citizenship information on the Census is likely to depress response rates in cities and states with large immigrant populations, directly threatening those states’ fair representation in Congress and the Electoral College, as well as billions of dollars in critical federal funds.