After the release of the 2020 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year experimental data products and 2016-2020 ACS 5-year data, a data processing error was identified that resulted in a small number of records being mistakenly coded as Hispanic or Latino. In the Hispanic Origin and Race edit specification, when the "Yes, another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin" checkbox is selected but a non-Hispanic write-in is present on the “Other Hispanic” write-in line, the checkbox is supposed to be removed. As a result of the processing error, respondents who checked the “Yes, another Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin” checkbox and provided a non-Hispanic write-in only were mistakenly classified as Hispanic by not removing the “Other Hispanic” checkbox. This error had a nominal impact on the final estimates. The error mostly impacted estimates containing detailed non-Hispanic groups, such as detailed race or ancestry, crossed by Hispanic Origin.

The data editing and processing error was limited to the 2020 ACS.  The ACS data processing system has been updated and corrected for the 2021 ACS 1-year and 5-year data products. Revised data for 2020 will be used to create the 2021 and later 5-year ACS data.