Seventeen States Now Face DOJ Suits Over Immigrant Tuition

The Justice Department has sued New York, Connecticut and Vermont over laws letting immigrants without permanent legal status pay resident tuition.

The suits, filed August 10, bring to 17 the number of states the department has sued over such policies since President Donald Trump returned to office.

Courts have already struck down the laws in Texas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Illinois, and all of those states except Illinois joined the federal government rather than defend their laws.

Lawsuits are also pending in California, Colorado, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Virginia.

At least 20 states and Washington, D.C., offer the lower rate to undocumented students, and roughly 525,000 such students are enrolled in colleges nationwide, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

The lawsuits follow an April 2025 executive order directing the attorney general to stop the enforcement of state laws that give noncitizens tuition rates denied to American citizens from other states.

Diego Sánchez of the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration called the effort without precedent, saying the policies generally let students who attended and graduated from high school in the state and meet additional state requirements pay the same rate as their classmates.

Courts have struck down five of these tuition laws, and four of those states folded rather than defend them. Only Illinois fought and lost; Minnesota fought and won this spring, and the Justice Department has since appealed, leaving both sides claiming momentum, Inside Higher Ed reports. Who pays full freight for public college is what the rulings decide: roughly 525,000 undocumented students are enrolled nationwide, and at least 20 states plus Washington let qualifying students pay resident rates. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton refused to defend the 2001 statute, and the National Immigration Law Center’s Efrén Olivares says thousands of students are now kept out by exorbitant tuition, Missouri Independent finds. The Minnesota appeal lands next.