The state of Oklahoma and the U.S. Department of Justice have agreed to overturn a state law that let illegal immigrants pay in-state tuition rates.
In-state tuition rates are offered at public colleges and universities to students who are residents of the state where the school is located. People who live outside the state typically pay higher tuition rates. The Oklahoma law gave in-state tuition rates to students who graduated from an Oklahoma high school in the state and lived with a parent or legal guardian while attending that school for a minimum of two years before graduation.
On Aug. 5, the federal government filed a legal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, initiating a lawsuit against the state. The filing came the same day the two sides submitted a “joint motion for entry of consent judgment.”
The lawsuit is part of a drive by the Trump administration to reestablish legal distinctions between U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants. In the complaint, the federal government said federal law prohibits “aliens not lawfully present in the United States from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens.”
Despite this, Oklahoma law allowed individuals unlawfully present in the country to be eligible for in-state tuition benefits at state schools, while requiring U.S. citizens “from other states to pay higher tuition rates.”
Federal law forbids “this unequal treatment of Americans,” which violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the complaint said.
The Supremacy Clause says that federal laws preempt, or supersede, state laws that conflict with federal laws.
In the motion, both governments asked the district court to enter a final judgment declaring that the state law is invalid because it violates the Supremacy Clause. They also asked the court to issue a permanent injunction blocking the state from enforcing the tuition policy.
The Justice Department said it filed the lawsuit because federal law “prohibits institutions of higher education from providing benefits to aliens that are not offered to U.S. citizens. The state law blatantly conflicts with federal law and is thus in conflict with the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.”
The lawsuit came after President Donald Trump signed two executive orders that aim to prevent “illegal aliens … [from] obtaining taxpayer benefits or preferential treatments,” the department said.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond hailed the lawsuit settlement, “Today marks the end of a longstanding exploitation of Oklahoma taxpayers, who for many years have subsidized colleges and universities as they provide unlawful benefits to illegal immigrants in the form of in-state tuition. Rewarding foreign nationals who are in our country illegally with lower tuition costs that are not made available to out-of-state American citizens is not only wrong—it is discriminatory and unlawful.”
The deal between the two governments is subject to approval by the district court.
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