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DOJ Sues New York, Connecticut and Vermont Over Tuition for Undocumented Students—But the Federal Rule Turns on How the Benefit Is Defined
The Justice Department has opened a new front in its national campaign against state tuition policies for students who are in the United States without lawful immigration status.
On August 10, the department filed separate federal lawsuits against New York, Connecticut and Vermont, challenging laws that allow some undocumented students to receive in-state tuition and state or institutional financial assistance.
The administration describes the dispute in simple 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,” Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said.
The statute he is relying on is real.
The legal question is less simple than the slogan.
At the center of all three cases is 8 U.S.C. § 1623, a provision Congress enacted in 1996.
It says that a person who is not lawfully present in the United States cannot receive a postsecondary education benefit “on the basis of residence within a State” unless U.S. citizens can receive the same benefit without regard to whether they live in that state.
That language gives the Justice Department a straightforward argument when a state explicitly says: residents get the lower rate, undocumented residents count as residents, and U.S. citizens who live elsewhere do not.
But it also creates the central dispute.
What if a state bases eligibility on something other than residence—such as attending and graduating from a high school in the state?
That question is not hypothetical.
In March, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s challenge to Minnesota’s tuition program.
Minnesota makes certain benefits available to students who attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years and satisfy other requirements.
The court concluded that the federal government had misread § 1623 because the benefit was tied to the student’s educational history rather than simply to state residence.
The Justice Department has appealed.
California’s highest court reached a similar conclusion years earlier in Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, holding that a tuition exemption based on high-school attendance and graduation was not a benefit granted “on the basis of residence.”
That history matters because the new lawsuits do not challenge three identical statutes.
New York, Connecticut and Vermont have different eligibility systems.
Some parts of those systems are more closely connected to residency than others.
That means the strongest version of the Justice Department’s case may differ from state to state—and even from one benefit to another inside the same state.
New York presents the most complicated example.
The Justice Department says New York has allowed eligible undocumented students to receive lower SUNY and CUNY tuition since 2002 while charging many U.S. citizens from other states the higher nonresident rate.
The price difference can be substantial.
In its complaint, DOJ cites annual SUNY undergraduate tuition of roughly $7,070 for residents and $17,730 for nonresidents.
At CUNY, the complaint says a full-time nonresident can pay more than twice the resident undergraduate tuition rate.
But New York’s statute does not merely say that any undocumented person who moves into the state immediately qualifies for in-state tuition.
A nonresident student can qualify through specified New York educational ties.
Among the principal routes are attending an approved New York high school for at least two years, graduating and applying to SUNY or CUNY within five years, or completing an approved New York GED pathway and applying within the required period.
Students without lawful immigration status must also file an affidavit concerning an intention to seek lawful status when eligible.
That structure gives New York an argument that at least some eligibility is connected to education in the state rather than immigration status alone.
The Justice Department responds that those educational requirements are themselves closely tied to residence.
Its complaint notes that attendance at New York public high schools generally depends on living in a New York school district.
DOJ therefore argues that New York is using high-school attendance as a practical proxy for state residence and then extending resident tuition to undocumented students while denying the same rate to many citizens who live elsewhere.
That is a legal theory.
It is not yet a final judicial holding in the New York case.
The federal government is also challenging New York’s financial-aid rules.
The Senator José Peralta New York State DREAM Act gives qualifying undocumented students access to state-administered financial aid programs.
Those can include programs such as the Tuition Assistance Program and, for eligible applicants, other state grants or scholarships.
This part of the case is important because financial aid is different from a tuition classification.
A reduced tuition rate determines what a school charges.
A grant or scholarship involves public or institutional money being made available to an eligible student.
The legal analysis can therefore implicate both § 1623 and the broader federal rules governing state and local public benefits.
Connecticut gives the Justice Department a more direct residency argument.
Under the law cited in the federal complaint, a student seeking the special in-state classification must reside in Connecticut, complete at least two years of high-school-level education in the state, graduate from a Connecticut high school or equivalent program, and enroll in a Connecticut public institution.
A student without lawful status must also submit an affidavit concerning efforts to legalize status when eligible.
Because “resides in this State” is expressly part of the statutory test, DOJ argues that § 1623 applies directly.
Connecticut has also expanded access to institutional financial aid for qualifying undocumented students.
The state’s system uses a separate aid application for students who cannot use the federal FAFSA because of immigration status.
The Justice Department argues that this creates a state-supported benefit for undocumented Connecticut residents that is not guaranteed on comparable terms to U.S. citizens who reside elsewhere.
Connecticut officials reject the premise that these students are being placed “over” Americans.
They describe the laws as educational-access policies for students who live in Connecticut, attended its schools and are part of its communities.
Vermont is different again.
In 2024, the state enacted Act 136, which prohibits public higher-education residency policies from excluding a person solely because of immigration status if that person otherwise meets Vermont’s residency requirements and federal law permits the benefit.
The relevant provisions took effect in 2025.
Vermont also opened state-funded student-aid eligibility to qualifying residents without making lawful immigration status an automatic disqualifier.
Because Vermont expressly ties the benefit to state domicile or residency, the Justice Department argues that its case falls squarely within § 1623.
Vermont’s statutory language includes an important qualification.
The law says the policy applies to the extent permitted under federal law.
The Justice Department calls that type of savings language ineffective because, in its view, the underlying benefit already conflicts with § 1623.
Vermont can respond that the statute should be implemented consistently with federal limits rather than presumed invalid on its face.
That is precisely the kind of question federal courts will have to resolve.
The three filings bring the Justice Department’s nationwide total to 17 lawsuits challenging state in-state tuition policies for undocumented students.
That number is significant.
But it should not be confused with 17 final court victories.
DOJ says it has obtained favorable orders involving Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Illinois.
Some of those outcomes came after state officials agreed with the federal government or stopped defending the challenged policy.
Minnesota, by contrast, won dismissal at the district-court level, and other cases remain pending.
Texas illustrates why procedural history matters.
The first federal ruling there came after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton agreed with the Trump administration’s challenge rather than defending the state law.
The Fifth Circuit later issued a decision supporting the federal government’s interpretation of § 1623 in related litigation.
That gives DOJ meaningful appellate precedent in the Fifth Circuit.
It does not automatically control federal courts in New York, Connecticut or Vermont, which sit in the Second Circuit.
The Second Circuit point is one reason the August 10 filings matter beyond the three states themselves.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said DOJ has now sued every state in the Second Circuit that maintains a policy the department believes violates the federal rule.
If one or more of these cases reaches the appellate court, the litigation could produce a major Second Circuit interpretation of § 1623.
That would be more consequential than another district-court order because it would bind federal courts across New York, Connecticut and Vermont unless the Supreme Court or Congress changed the governing law.
The administration also makes a broader policy argument.
DOJ says tuition benefits and state aid can create incentives for illegal immigration.
Congress did express a general policy in the 1996 welfare law that public benefits should not become an incentive for unlawful immigration.
That policy statement helps explain the administration’s theory.
It does not prove that in-state tuition programs actually cause people to cross the border illegally.
The lawsuits do not present migration data establishing such a causal effect.
That distinction is important because many students covered by these laws did not arrive in a state shortly before enrolling in college.
The eligibility rules often require years of local schooling, graduation from an in-state high school, state residence or some combination of those conditions.
Supporters argue that the policies are aimed largely at young people who grew up in the state and would otherwise face tuition rates that make college unaffordable.
Opponents respond that the federal statute deliberately prevents states from using residence to give undocumented students a benefit unavailable to citizens living elsewhere.
Those are competing policy arguments layered on top of the statutory question.
The economics also require more precision than saying an undocumented student receives money that an out-of-state citizen “literally pays for.”
Public universities are supported through a mix of tuition, state appropriations, federal grants, research funding and other revenue.
In-state tuition is usually a lower price charged to students who meet a state’s eligibility rules; it is not necessarily a cash payment transferred from one student to another.
State grants and scholarships, by contrast, do involve public or institutionally controlled aid.
Both can be described as valuable benefits.
They are not economically identical.
Nor is in-state tuition best understood simply as a reward for students who personally paid state taxes.
Traditional resident tuition is generally based on domicile or other state residency rules.
An 18-year-old U.S. citizen can qualify through parental domicile even if that student has paid little or no state income tax personally.
States use the lower rate partly because their public institutions are subsidized for residents as members of the state community.
The real legal dispute is who a state may include in that community for tuition purposes after Congress enacted § 1623.
The phrase “American students first” therefore expresses a political priority more clearly than it states the legal rule.
Section 1623 does not say undocumented students must always be charged out-of-state tuition.
It says they cannot receive a postsecondary benefit on the basis of state residence unless U.S. citizens can receive the same benefit without regard to residence.
That wording is why states have designed some tuition statutes around high-school attendance or graduation rather than residency alone.
Whether a particular design succeeds is a question of statutory interpretation.
There is also a separate federal statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1621, governing state and local public benefits more broadly.
That law generally restricts benefits for people who are not qualified aliens, but it allows a state to affirmatively make such individuals eligible through a state law enacted after August 22, 1996.
States rely on that provision when authorizing certain benefits for undocumented residents.
Section 1623 is more specific for postsecondary benefits based on residence.
The interaction between those provisions is another reason the litigation is not resolved by a single sentence from either side.
The strongest case for the Justice Department is narrower than the rhetoric.
Congress expressly addressed higher-education benefits for people who are not lawfully present.
Where a state makes undocumented residents eligible for resident tuition while charging out-of-state U.S. citizens more solely because those citizens live elsewhere, DOJ has a substantial textual argument that federal law preempts the state rule.
Connecticut and Vermont contain explicit residency components that give that argument particular force.
The strongest case for the states is also narrower.
Congress wrote “on the basis of residence,” not a blanket federal prohibition on every tuition benefit available to an undocumented student.
Courts have recognized that distinction when eligibility rests on high-school attendance and graduation rather than residence itself.
States also argue that people who have spent years in their schools and communities can rationally be treated differently from students with no comparable connection to the state.
Whether the statutory text permits that policy depends on the exact criteria each state uses.
That is why the outcomes in New York, Connecticut and Vermont may not be identical.
New York’s high-school and GED pathways create a potentially different statutory question from Vermont’s express domicile framework.
Connecticut combines residence with a two-year in-state education requirement.
The financial-aid provisions add another layer because they involve benefits beyond the tuition rate itself.
A single national slogan cannot substitute for analyzing those provisions separately.
The lawsuits also do not immediately change tuition bills.
DOJ is asking federal courts for declaratory and injunctive relief.
Until a court issues an order—or a state voluntarily changes its policy—the challenged programs remain governed by existing state law.
New York has said it believes its statute is lawful.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has vowed to defend the state’s policy.
The litigation is beginning, not ending.
So the August 10 filings settle one issue: the Trump Justice Department has made challenges to in-state tuition for undocumented students a coordinated national enforcement priority, and the campaign has now reached every Second Circuit state with a policy DOJ considers unlawful.
What the lawsuits do not settle is the administration’s broader claim that every one of these programs plainly violates federal law.
Section 1623 draws a specific line around benefits granted “on the basis of residence.”
Courts have disagreed about how that language applies to state programs built around high-school attendance, domicile and other eligibility rules.
For New York, Connecticut and Vermont, the decisive question will not be which side uses the stronger slogan.
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It will be how each statute actually works—and whether federal judges conclude that Congress already prohibited it.
