Posted on 06/05/2025 8:36:37 AM PDT by thegagline
A federal judge on Wednesday permanently blocked Texas from enforcing a state law allowing illegal immigrants living in the Lone Star State to pay in-state tuition rates for public universities after the Trump administration challenged the statute.
The two-decades-old law was overturned after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a motion in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas agreeing with the Justice Department’s contention that the statute “expressly and directly conflicts” with federal immigration law.
“[T]he Court hereby declares that the challenged provisions … as applied to aliens who are not lawfully present in the United States, violate the Supremacy Clause and are unconstitutional and invalid,” District Judge Reed O’Connor determined.
After the ruling, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared on X that “In-state tuition for illegal immigrants in Texas has ended.”
“Ending this discriminatory and un-American provision is a major victory for Texas,” Paxton said in a statement.
In a lawsuit filed shortly before Paxton entered the state’s joint motion in the case, the Trump administration argued that “federal law prohibits illegal aliens from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens.”***
The law, which survived several Republican-led legislative repeal efforts, allowed illegal immigrant students who have been Texas residents for at least three years leading up to their high school graduation and who pledge to apply for permanent legal status to pay dramatically lower tuition rates than out-of-state students.
The University of Texas at Austin, for example, charges out-of-state students between $40,582 and $48,712 for annual tuition, whereas in-state students pay between $10,858 and $13,576, according to the school.***
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
nice step in right direction, but honestly it would be rare for a child born in Mexico to be going to US college. The more likely thing is the US citizen child of illegal aliens attending US college. Which this ruling wont change.
All of the crooked garbage has to be thrown out. As daddy always said, “You can do it the easy way, or you can do it the hard way.”
The cost for out of state US citizens is the major reason our one son did not go to UT. Thankfully. Mrs EC hates the color orange so our son decided to go to Oklahoma State instead. Arghhh.
EC
Instead of this we should just say that illegals are NOT allowed to attend universities in Texas!
"Federal judge declares Texas law granting illegal migrants in-state college tuition unconstitutional [??? emphasis added] after state joins Trump in lawsuit"
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Regardless that Texas conservatives basically won this decision, there is a problem with the judge's decision in the context of state sovereignty imo.
I was going whine about "republican form of government" until I remembered that Texans don't pay state income tax. Is that right?
The other problem is that judges need to be required to at least support their "constitutional" and "not constitutional" decisions with a reference to a constitutional clause that reasonably supports their constitutionality claim, doing so in 24 hours, Sundays excluded, or get removed from the bench.
It's ultimately up to legal majority citizen Texas voters to decide if they want Texas oil businesses to pay for public education for illegal immigrants or not, not some judge with an unspecified constitutional clause. That's not fair to big oil, but I don't see a clear constitutional remedy at this time.
Insights welcome.
NOT A CITIZEN IF PARENTS NOT CITIZENS.
IS AN ANCHOR BABY
Sometimes the hard way is the right way.
Does the Mrs. know OSO is primarily orange as well....& black iirc.
Texas is actually burnt orange....my favorite color of all
It is not just Texas, many other states have DEI deals for educating illegal aliens. This will have national implications.
There were about 57,000 students without legal status enrolled in Texas colleges and universities in 2022, according to a report from the President’s Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.
UH Okie state colors are orange and black right?
Will this ruling apply to the other states who do this?
It’s gotten so far out of hand it’s almost unbelievable.
wow that is shocking, I would never have guessed it was that many if you are not counting anchor babies.
The Mrs is a diehard OU Sooner fan. It nearly killed her to write the checks to OSU.
EC
The Court adopted a Joint Motion for Entry of a Consent Judgment. The constitutional basis is that the Texas Education Laws that gave preferential treatment to illegals is a violation of the Supremacy Clause. Specifically,it violates 8 USC §1623 “Limitation on eligibility for preferential treatment of aliens not lawfully present on basis of residence for higher education benefits”
I was surprised too
It would not include anchor babies since they are considered legal
"Specifically,it violates 8 USC §1623 “Limitation on eligibility for preferential treatment of aliens not lawfully present on basis of residence for higher education benefits”"
Every action and law of the unconstitutionally big federal government needs to have a constitutionally express delegation of federal power that reasonably supports it. If no such clause is found for a law, then it needs to be taken out of the books imo.
Noting that you probably didn't already hear this from Mr. Musk, let's consider the Education Department. It remains that President Thomas Jefferson, in a State of the Union address, also Justice Joseph Story, had both indicated that the states had never expressly constitutionally given the feds the specific power to dictate, regulate, frustrate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes — something that the states have still never done!
"The great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers [emphasis added].” —Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806." (Jefferson is indicating that Congress cannot tax and spend in the name of intrastate infrastructure imo.)
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"The power to regulate manufactures is no more confided to congress, than the power to interfere with the systems of education [all emphases added], the poor laws, or the road laws of the states." —Justice Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 2, 1833.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Also, the 14th Amendment makes a distinction between citizen rights and people rights imo, alien rights arguably a third tier.
"14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law [emphasis added]; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
But more importantly, since not even citizen students have an express constitutional right to school, illegal alien students are not in a good position for federal support imo, especially in the context of unconstitutional, alleged vote-buying federal funding for citizen students.
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