“However, to use the ACS as the vehicle for requiring Americans under penalty of a fine to respond to highly personal questions that will be shared with private corporations is a clear violation of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which requires only that the census be taken every ten years for the sole purpose of congressional redistricting.”
A promotional video for the Census Bureau’s intrusive American Community Survey boasts that the collected information is helpful to private industry, providing confirmation from the federal government itself that the survey is unconstitutional, according to a prominent public-interest lawyer.
The detailed questionnaire demands that consumers answer – under penalty of law – queries about emotional health, mortgages, marital histories, bathing habits, utility bills, personal possessions and the like.
In the video, Target Corp.’s Joan Naymark declares that no one “but the Census Bureau has the resources and ability to collect information from every household across the U.S.” Other corporate officials explain how they are assisted in their product management by the answers required of households who live near their stores.
Even Robert Groves, the director of the Census Bureau, explains in a new letter to John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, how the ACS “provides important statistical information that promotes legitimate governmental interests.”
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