The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against 12 states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, challenging in-state college tuition policies for undocumented students. The department argues these state laws violate federal immigration law.

In its filings, the Justice Department contends that some state policies offer financial aid benefits to undocumented students not available to many out-of-state U.S. citizens. The department argues states cannot circumvent federal law by basing tuition eligibility on high school attendance rather than residency and seeks to permanently block these policies. Lawsuits are pending in Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, California, New Jersey, and Kansas.

Brett A. Shumate, Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the Justice Department, stated, "This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens." He added, "This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country."

The National Immigration Law Center disputes the Justice Department's legal argument. The center maintains that tuition equity policies comply with federal law because eligibility is based on educational criteria rather than residency. A representative for the center stated, "The law is very specific. It does not preclude states from providing in-state tuition to undocumented residents of the state as long as nonresidents in similar circumstances also qualify." The representative affirmed, "The tuition equity measures are fully consistent with federal law."

Corinne Kentor, Senior Manager of Research and Policy for the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, reported that students in states that ended tuition equity policies have dropped out, reduced course loads, transferred schools, or resorted to fundraising. Kentor said, "The biggest impact that we've seen is just huge confusion, and this confusion is happening to students who really are unsure about what they qualify for, how their costs are going to change, and confusion is also happening at the institutional level where the policy has changed really quickly." She added, "This is a huge potential loss of talent and loss of a generation of motivated students who are deeply connected to their local communities and who, in many cases, want to attend higher education locally, so that they can contribute to their communities and their state economy."

Why It Matters

State laws granting in-state tuition to undocumented students have been in place for over two decades, with Texas passing the first such law in 2001. Currently, 20 states and Washington, D.C., offer in-state tuition to undocumented students, and 18 states and Washington, D.C., provide state financial aid to these students. Approximately 525,000 undocumented students attended U.S. colleges in 2024, representing 2.4% of all higher education students. Research indicates that tuition equity policies can reduce high school dropout rates by up to 8 percentage points and increase college enrollment among undocumented students. The Trump administration began challenging state tuition equity laws in 2025.