WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to a California rule that allows colleges and universities to offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, a policy similar to those in Nebraska and 11 other states.
The justices dismissed an appeal from lawyers for a conservative immigration-law group who contended "preferential treatment" for illegal immigrants violated federal immigration law. The group had cited a little-known provision in a 1986 law that barred states from giving "any postsecondary benefit" to an "alien who is not lawfully present in the United States ... on the basis of residence within a state."
But last year, in the first ruling of its kind, the California Supreme Court said the state's policy did not conflict with federal law because the tuition benefit is contingent on a student graduating from a California high school, not the student's place of residence. The state's legislature adopted this policy in 2001.
People are also reading…
Nebraska's 2006 Dream Act also requires students to have graduated from an in-state high school.
State Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont has twice tried to repeal the Nebraska law, most recently in the last legislative session. The Legislature's Education Committee killed that bill a week after a Lincoln civil-rights attorney told members the Dream Act does not violate federal law.
Janssen could not immediately be reached Monday evening.
In the 2009-10 school year, 37 undocumented students were enrolled at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and one at a state college.
In California, officials said about 41,000 students last year took advantage of the state's special tuition rule, but the vast majority of those were students at community colleges. In 2009, the 10-campus University of California system said 2,019 students paid in-state tuition under the terms of the state law. Of these, about 600 were believed to be illegal immigrants.
The other states with similar laws are Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.
Another 12 states have explicitly refused to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. For its part, the federal government — through the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations — has taken no steps to enforce the federal provision.
Citing this confusion over the meaning of federal law, the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute had appealed the California case to the Supreme Court. Kris Kobach, a Kansas lawyer and counsel for the group, said the federal law "will become a dead letter in any state where the legislature is willing to play semantic games to defeat the objectives of Congress."
The justices put out a one-line order dismissing the appeal in the case of Martinez v. Board of Regents of the University of California.
But all was not lost for Kobach, the same attorney representing the city of Fremont in its own illegal immigration-related court battle.
Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court upheld an Arizona law allowing authorities to take business licenses from employers who repeatedly hire illegal workers.
On Monday, referencing the Arizona case, the justices told judges to take a second look at a case out of Hazleton, Pa., a city also being defended by Kobach.
That city of 30,000 became a focus of anti-immigration attention when it vowed to take away the licenses of employers or landlords who hired or rented to illegal immigrants. But the ordinances were struck down by a federal judge and the U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia.
Kobach said the court's decision on the Arizona case "vindicates Fremont's position" on its own ordinance.
An April 2012 trial is set for the legal challenge of the Fremont ordinance, which bans hiring or renting to illegal immigrants.Â