\n<\/p>\n
Undocumented students and immigrant advocacy organizations are still reeling after Texas, earlier this month, swiftly sided with a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against its policy of permitting in-state tuition for undocumented students. The two-decade-old law, which Republican state lawmakers had recently tried and failed to quash, was dismantled within a matter of hours in a move some critics called collusive.<\/p>\n
Now the DOJ is employing the same strategy all over again\u2014this time in Kentucky. The department filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky on Tuesday challenging the in-state tuition policy for undocumented students. The lawsuit, which names Democratic governor Andy Beshear, Commissioner of Education Robbie Fletcher and the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, takes issue with a policy that allows graduates of Kentucky high schools who live in the state, regardless of citizenship, to access in-state tuition benefits.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,\u201d U.S. attorney general Pamela Bondi said in a statement. \u201cThe Department of Justice just won on this exact issue in Texas, and we look forward to fighting in Kentucky to protect the rights of American citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beshear is trying to distance himself from the legal battle. Crystal Staley, communications director for the governor\u2019s office, said in a statement that the office hasn\u2019t been served with a lawsuit, nor did it receive advance notice or hold prior conversations with the department about the regulation. She emphasized that the in-state tuition policy was established by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder Kentucky law, CPE is independent, has sole authority to determine student residency requirements for the purposes of in-state tuition, and controls its own regulations,\u201d Staley wrote. \u201cThe Governor has no authority to alter CPE\u2019s regulations and should not be a party to the lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education also only became aware of the lawsuit Wednesday morning and reported that afternoon that it had not yet been served legal documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur staff General Counsel is reviewing pertinent federal laws and state regulations at this time to determine next steps,\u201d Melissa Young, the council\u2019s communications senior fellow, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>.<\/p>\n As of Wednesday evening, no new developments in the case had taken place, but Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman, a Republican, indicated in a statement to Inside Higher Ed <\/em>that his office planned to support the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cPreserving in-state tuition for our citizens at the commonwealth\u2019s premier public universities is important to fostering Kentuckians\u2019 potential and encouraging a vibrant state economy,\u201d Coleman said in the statement. \u201cOur Office will support the Trump Administration\u2019s efforts to uphold federal law in Kentucky.\u201d<\/p>\n As in Texas, a group of Republican lawmakers proposed legislation earlier this year to prevent noncitizens in Kentucky from qualifying as residents and accessing in-state tuition benefits. But the bill didn\u2019t proceed further. <\/p>\n The new lawsuit heightens fears among undocumented students\u2019 advocates that the Trump administration could target in-state tuition policies across the country, which help undocumented students in 23 states and D.C. pay for college when they can\u2019t access federal financial aid. Advocates also worry the Trump administration could continue to sue red states to secure policy wins desired by both Republican state lawmakers and the federal government. (In Kentucky, Republicans control the attorney general\u2019s office and the State Legislature.)<\/p>\n Monica Andrade, director of state policy and legal strategy at the Presidents\u2019 Alliance on Higher Education, predicted after the Texas lawsuit, \u201cThis might only be the beginning, and there might be future actions that extend beyond Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n Now she worries she\u2019s been proven right.<\/p>\n The move in Kentucky comes as undocumented students and civil rights organizations are fighting back in Texas.<\/p>\n The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Latino civil rights organization, filed a motion on behalf of undocumented students in Texas to intervene in the DOJ lawsuit. The motion argues that the speed at which Texas and the DOJ came to an agreement and the judge closed the case provided no opportunity for a hearing or for the public to weigh in.<\/p>\n \u201cOur federal courts are public agencies,\u201d said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel at MALDEF. \u201cThey\u2019re supposed to undertake their work in the public eye. The two parties and the court did all of this behind closed doors in one afternoon, without setting a public hearing\u00a0\u2026 That is a complete abuse of the judicial system.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo come up with a consent judgment like that, they had to have been planning this for weeks,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery Texan should be offended if something their legislators passed and then never repealed was so easily killed by the attorney general acting in collusion with the Department of Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n MALDEF is representing unnamed affected students, including three DACA recipients: a third-year biomedical science student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley who is planning to pursue medical school, a student earning a master\u2019s in higher education at University of Houston who was planning to apply to Ph.D. programs and a master\u2019s student in clinical mental health counseling at the University of North Texas.<\/p>\n \u201cShe cannot afford to pay out-of-state tuition and will likely be forced to drop out of her program,\u201d the motion says of one student.<\/p>\n The goal is for the student group to become a party in the lawsuit so that it can appeal the decision. Texas and the federal government have until early July to oppose MALDEF\u2019s motion to intervene, but if the judge denies an intervention, MALDEF could appeal that decision as well. <\/p>\n Andrade said that what MALDEF is doing could possibly be replicated in other states if the DOJ challenges more in-state tuition laws, though some states might face different challenges that require different approaches. For example, Republican lawmakers in Arizona included a provision in their House budget, approved June\u00a012 by the House Appropriations Committee, that colleges can\u2019t use public money to reduce tuition for noncitizens, The Arizona Capitol Times<\/em> reported. Some cited the Texas lawsuit.<\/p>\n The Presidents\u2019 Alliance is in \u201cclose coordination with legal, with advocacy and institutional partners to explore\u2014whether it\u2019s immediate or longer-term\u2014actions that we can take\u201d to prepare for different kinds of attacks, Andrade said. \u201cFolks in the states where we\u2019re having conversations, their laws comport with federal law. But given everything that\u2019s been going on, that doesn\u2019t mean that folks should not be preparing for any type of challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n The organization is also trying to advise Texas undocumented students who are \u201cscrambling,\u201d in the absence of any state guidance to higher ed institutions as to when the tuition rate change goes into effect and to whom the shift applies. It\u2019s unclear, for example, whether students with DACA or Temporary Protected Status are included.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re telling students to continue to take their classes and do not make any drastic changes based on this,\u201d Andrade said.<\/p>\n TheDream.US, a scholarship provider for undocumented students, is also gearing up to help Texas students find more affordable programs if they can\u2019t pay their colleges\u2019 out-of-state tuition prices. MALDEF predicted some students\u2019 costs would increase up to 800\u00a0percent\u2014in some cases, from $50 to $450 per credit hour.<\/p>\n Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of TheDream.US, said the organization is prioritizing helping students connect with online programs, because many live in Texas border towns, where commuting to a more distant college could require having to cross immigration control checkpoints. <\/p>\n In the meantime, Texas institutions and students are embroiled in \u201cconfusion and uncertainty and chaos\u201d as they await more information, she said.<\/p>\n Daniel I. Morales, an associate professor of law and Dwight Olds Chair at University of Houston Law Center, said what happened in Texas is the latest example of a national trend: the \u201cabsolute erasure\u201d of state and local issues in favor of the administration\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n Morales said two decades ago, Texas\u2019s in-state tuition policy was born out of Republican governor Rick Perry\u2019s recognition of \u201cthe reality locally in Texas, that we have an enormous undocumented population that is enormously productive if given the opportunity to go to college,\u201d which benefits the state economy. But now, state lawmakers fear risking their career trajectories if they don\u2019t prioritize partisan national interests, he said.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen in Kentucky. But if it goes the way of Texas and the attorney general files a joint motion with the DOJ, civil rights organizations such as MALDEF would have to be the ones to fight it, with students as the plaintiffs, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cStudents, if they don\u2019t have the resources to pay out-of-state tuition, they don\u2019t have the resources to litigate, either,\u201d at least not on their own, he said. \u201cThere\u2019s very little recourse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Undocumented students and immigrant advocacy organizations are still reeling after Texas, earlier this month, swiftly sided with a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against its policy of permitting in-state tuition for undocumented students. The two-decade-old law, which Republican state lawmakers had recently tried and failed to quash, was dismantled within a matter of hours in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1414,1417,1416,328,1415,1010,1418],"class_list":{"0":"post-9306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-doj","9":"tag-instate","10":"tag-kentuckys","11":"tag-policy","12":"tag-targets","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tuition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Pushback in Texas<\/h2>\n