In both complaints, the DOJ invokes the Supremacy Clause and Section 1623(a) of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) to argue that states cannot legally offer postsecondary education benefits to undocumented immigrants unless those same exact benefits are extended to all U.S. citizens. The common core of the federal argument is that by establishing a high school attendance loophole to grant in-state pricing, both states are creating an unconstitutional system of unequal treatment that penalizes out-of-state American citizens as "second-class citizens" while incentivizing illegal immigration.
Twenty-one U.S. states have historically structured their tuition equity laws around high school attendance rather than formal immigration status. Under the Massachusetts Tuition Equity Law (2023) and the Rhode Island Student Success Act (2021), any student who attends a local high school for at least three years and graduates is eligible for the lower rate.
The DOJ’s argument hinges on a simple comparison of tuition bills and the idea that if basing eligibility on local high school completion is simply a proxy for state residency, the laws unconstitutionally favor noncitizens over out-of-state U.S. citizens. In Massachusetts, for instance, an in-state resident pays less than $16,000 annually at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, while an out-of-state U.S. citizen faces a $44,700 bill. The federal government asserts that charging an out-of-state American citizen three times more than an undocumented local resident flips the 1996 federal law on its head and violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
Simultaneously, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit dealt a major blow to immigrant advocates July 11 by upholding a district court ruling that blocks students from legally intervening to defend the Texas Dream Act (Students for Affordable Tuition v. Texas). By upholding the freeze on student intervention, the 5th Circuit effectively signaled that the high school attendance framework — the exact legal mechanism used by both New England states to anchor their tuition equity rules — is simply a proxy for residency that cannot survive federal preemption under Section 1623. With the Texas Attorney General’s office declining to defend the statute, the ruling effectively cements a rapid consent judgment that terminates the 25-year-old policy.
State Sovereignty Vs. Federal Intervention
The political context in New England, however, differs greatly from that of Texas, where the filings are likely headed toward protracted, multi-year constitutional litigation. Rather than folding to federal preemption, state attorneys in Massachusetts and Rhode Island are expected to lean heavily into Tenth Amendment arguments, asserting that the federal government is overreaching by attempting to dictate localized tuition matrices and state-funded scholarship eligibility to sovereign state university boards.
Still, it is relevant to note that the Trump administration is systematically attacking the decades-old boundary between federal immigration enforcement and state higher education policy. States have historically set their own residency and tuition rules for public universities, but the federal government is aggressively weaponizing statutory loopholes to turn localized educational criteria into a mechanism of federal immigration control. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) strongly condemned the recent 5th Circuit decision, arguing that the court allowed the federal government to use a tangential link to immigration authority to strip states of their Tenth Amendment rights to manage their own education systems.
The recent filings broaden the battlefield beyond base tuition rates, explicitly targeting state-funded financial aid, institutional grants, and scholarships as forbidden taxpayer-subsidized benefits. If the DOJ successfully invalidates these laws nationwide, tens of thousands of enrolled students will see their tuition bills double or triple overnight, effectively pricing them out of a degree mid-stream. For institutions already grappling with domestic enrollment cliffs and declining international student revenues, the sudden loss of tuition-paying students will reshape campus budgets and demographics for years to come.
The federal campaign has already delivered sweeping victories. Beyond the collapse of the Texas framework, federal courts have recently issued favorable orders permanently enjoining similar tuition equity laws in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Active lawsuits are currently pending in California, Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, New Jersey, and Kansas.
