Todd Blanche Sworn In As Trump's Attorney General - His First Act Infuriates Dems
DOJ Sues New York, Connecticut and Vermont Over Tuition Benefits - But the Legal Fight Turns on How Eligibility Is Defined
The Trump administration says the states are giving undocumented students benefits denied to Americans. The federal statute is narrower: it focuses on benefits granted on the basis of state residence.
The Justice Department opened a new front in its campaign against state tuition benefits for undocumented students on Monday.
DOJ filed separate lawsuits against New York, Connecticut and Vermont, arguing that their in-state tuition and financial-aid policies conflict with federal immigration law and unlawfully disadvantage U.S. citizens from other states.
The three filings bring the department's total to 17 lawsuits challenging state in-state tuition policies during the Trump administration.
They also complete what DOJ describes as a sweep of every state in the Second Circuit that maintains this type of policy.
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate summarized the administration's position in blunt terms.
“This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” Shumate said.
The political message is simple.
The law is more technical.
The main federal provision at issue is 8 U.S.C. § 1623, enacted in 1996.
It says a person who is not lawfully present in the United States may not receive a postsecondary education benefit “on the basis of residence” in a state unless a U.S. citizen or national can receive the same benefit, in no less amount, duration and scope, without regard to whether that citizen is a resident of the state.
That wording is the center of the dispute.
The statute does not say that states can never allow undocumented students to pay reduced tuition.
It targets a narrower category: preferential higher-education treatment based on state residence.
That means the legal outcome can depend heavily on how a state structures its eligibility rules.
A student who qualifies only because he or she is a resident presents the clearest version of DOJ's argument.
A student who qualifies because of a rule open to anyone who attended and graduated from a state high school presents a different question.
That distinction is not theoretical.
In March 2026, a federal judge dismissed a similar Justice Department lawsuit against Minnesota.
Minnesota's program allowed students who attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years to receive the benefit regardless of immigration status.
The judge concluded that DOJ had misread the federal statute because the benefit was tied to school attendance rather than simply to state residence.
That ruling does not control the new cases in New York, Connecticut or Vermont.
It does show why the claim that federal law automatically forbids every state tuition-equity program is too broad.
New York illustrates the complexity.
A 2001 state law expanded in-state tuition eligibility at CUNY and SUNY to certain students who had attended high school in New York or earned a qualifying New York equivalency diploma.
CUNY currently explains that “anyone” can receive the in-state rate if the listed high-school or GED criteria are satisfied, including undocumented students.
That matters because the high-school pathway is not facially limited to undocumented students.
A U.S. citizen who is not currently a New York resident may also qualify if that person meets the same educational criteria.
New York also has separate residence-based tuition rules for U.S. citizens, permanent residents and several categories of immigrants who have lived in the state for the required period.
The state went further in 2019 with the Senator José Peralta New York State DREAM Act.
The program gives eligible students who received a New York high-school credential, including undocumented students, access to New York-administered financial aid such as the Tuition Assistance Program and other scholarships if they satisfy the applicable requirements.
DOJ is challenging both tuition and financial-assistance provisions.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's office has said the state believes its statute is lawful and will be upheld.
Connecticut uses another version of the model.
The state has allowed certain undocumented students to receive in-state tuition since 2011.
To qualify under the provision highlighted in current reporting, a student must complete four years of high school in Connecticut and receive a diploma.
DOJ argues that the policy still provides a reduced rate to people without lawful status while many U.S. citizens from outside Connecticut must pay the higher nonresident rate.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has said he will fight the lawsuit and argues that the federal government has no authority to force Connecticut to abandon a policy the state adopted for students who grew up and were educated there.
Vermont may present the most direct version of the residency dispute.
Gov. Phil Scott signed a law in 2024 allowing all Vermont residents, regardless of immigration status to access in-state tuition rates and need-based financial aid at public colleges and universities.
DOJ says that structure conflicts with § 1623 because an undocumented Vermont resident can obtain a residence-based benefit that a U.S. citizen living in another state generally cannot receive merely by being a U.S. citizen.
Vermont officials had not yet filed a substantive response to the complaint when the lawsuits were announced.
The federal government also points to its results in other states.
According to DOJ, cases involving Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Illinois have produced favorable orders blocking or invalidating analogous tuition provisions.
Some of those outcomes came in states where officials did not mount the same defense that Democratic-led states are now promising.
Other cases remain pending across the country.
And the Minnesota dismissal demonstrates that DOJ's broader litigation campaign has not produced a uniform legal result.
That mixed record is important when evaluating the administration's claim that this is a “simple matter of federal law.”
DOJ has a clear statutory argument when a state explicitly bases a benefit on residence.
States have a stronger response when eligibility is written around high-school attendance, graduation or another criterion that is available without regard to citizenship.
The new lawsuits will require federal courts to decide which description best fits each challenged program.
The same caution applies to the economic argument.
In-state tuition is generally lower than out-of-state tuition because public colleges classify students under state residency and eligibility rules.
That difference can be worth thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
But it is not accurate to say that an individual student receives the lower rate because that student personally paid a specified amount of state tax.
States ordinarily define residency through domicile, educational history and other statutory rules, not through a calculation of how much tax a particular family has paid.
Likewise, higher out-of-state tuition does not by itself prove that nonresident students are directly financing every tuition discount granted to another student.
There is still a genuine distributional question.
Public colleges receive state support, and reduced tuition or state-funded financial aid has a budgetary cost somewhere in the system.
Supporters of DOJ's lawsuits argue that scarce public benefits should not be made available to people who lack lawful immigration status when citizens from other states face higher prices.
Supporters of the state laws respond that the students receiving the benefits often attended local schools for years, live in the state and are being treated like other members of the state's educational community.
That is a policy disagreement.
The lawsuits ask whether federal law also makes it a legal one.
The administration has also argued that tuition benefits create incentives for illegal immigration.
DOJ included that claim in announcing the three lawsuits.
But the complaints themselves will have to establish the legal conflict with federal law; the proposition that tuition policy materially increases illegal border crossings is a separate empirical claim and is not established merely by filing suit.
Many of the students covered by these programs were brought to the United States as children or completed years of schooling in the state before applying to college.
The eligibility rules differ from state to state, which makes sweeping claims about who is receiving the benefit especially risky.
The phrase “out-of-state American citizens do not receive the same benefit” also needs qualification.
A U.S. citizen who simply lives in another state will ordinarily pay the nonresident rate at a public university.
But some tuition-equity laws are written so that any student who attended high school in the state for the required period can qualify, including U.S. citizens who later live elsewhere.
That was central to the Minnesota court's ruling and is relevant to parts of New York's framework.
So the question is not merely whether an undocumented student pays less than a random out-of-state citizen.
The legal question is why the student qualifies and whether the same qualifying rule is genuinely open to citizens.
The Trump administration is nevertheless pursuing the issue systematically.
Seventeen lawsuits in little more than a year represent a national litigation strategy, not an isolated dispute with three Northeastern states.
The department has made clear that it intends to continue challenging programs it believes violate § 1623 and related federal requirements.
New York and Connecticut have signaled that they intend to defend their laws.
Vermont is now preparing for the same fight.
So Monday's filings settle one issue.
The Justice Department is serious about trying to eliminate state tuition and financial-aid programs it believes give undocumented students an unlawful preference.
What they do not settle is whether every policy DOJ has targeted actually violates federal law.
That answer will turn on the exact eligibility language in each state, the distinction between residence and educational history, and how federal courts interpret a statute that is narrower than the political slogan surrounding it.
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For students and universities in New York, Connecticut and Vermont, that distinction will determine whether the current benefits survive.
