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DOJ Sues New York, Connecticut and Vermont Over Undocumented-Student Tuition—But the Legal Fight Turns on What ‘Based on Residence’ Means
The Trump administration has expanded its nationwide legal campaign against state tuition policies for undocumented students, bringing the fight this week to every state in the Second Circuit that maintains such benefits.
The Justice Department filed separate lawsuits Monday against New York, Connecticut and Vermont, challenging laws that allow certain students without lawful immigration status to qualify for in-state tuition and, in some circumstances, financial assistance at public colleges and universities.
The three complaints bring the number of state tuition lawsuits announced by the department to 17.
Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate described the issue in sweeping 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. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country.”
That captures the administration’s argument, but the statute at the center of the cases is more specific than the shorthand suggests.
The Justice Department is relying primarily on 8 U.S.C. § 1623, a provision Congress 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 within a state unless a U.S. citizen or national can receive the same benefit without regard to whether that citizen is a resident of the state.
That wording matters because the central legal question is not simply whether an undocumented student receives a lower tuition rate than some American student from another state.
The question is whether the benefit is being provided “on the basis of residence” in a way federal law forbids.
The Justice Department says all three states cross that line. The states, however, do not use identical eligibility systems, and those differences could matter as the cases move through federal court.
Connecticut presents one of the more direct versions of the dispute.
Under the Connecticut law challenged by the government, a student can qualify for in-state tuition if the student resides in Connecticut, completed at least two years of high school education in the state, graduated from a Connecticut high school or its equivalent, and is entering or enrolled at a public institution of higher education. A student without lawful immigration status must also file an affidavit stating that he or she has applied to legalize that status or will do so when eligible.
Connecticut has allowed qualifying undocumented students to receive in-state tuition since 2011. A later law also made a defined group of such students eligible to apply for institutional financial aid, subject to additional requirements.
The federal complaint argues that the residence requirement makes the conflict with § 1623 straightforward: an undocumented Connecticut resident who satisfies the other criteria can receive the resident rate while an American citizen who lives in another state and does not qualify for Connecticut residency generally pays the higher nonresident rate.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has rejected that framing and promised to defend the law.
Tong, who supported the policy when he served in the state legislature, said Connecticut offers in-state tuition and aid to eligible Connecticut students because the state wants young people who grew up and studied there to have a path to higher education.
That argument points to an important practical distinction missing from the broadest descriptions of the policy.
A student cannot simply arrive in Connecticut, obtain a local address and automatically unlock in-state tuition under the challenged provision. The statute also requires Connecticut residence, at least two years of high school education in the state, graduation and enrollment requirements.
Vermont’s law is newer and also ties eligibility directly to residency.
In 2024, Vermont enacted Act 136, with relevant provisions taking effect in July 2025. The law directs public institutions not to exclude an otherwise qualified person from resident-tuition status solely because of immigration status if that person otherwise satisfies Vermont residency requirements and federal law.
The University of Vermont and the Vermont State Colleges System use residency policies based in part on domicile. Vermont law also allows otherwise eligible residents to participate in certain state-funded student-aid programs without being disqualified solely because of federal immigration status.
The Justice Department argues that those provisions fit squarely within § 1623 because eligibility expressly depends on Vermont residency while comparable resident benefits are not generally available to U.S. citizens living elsewhere.
New York is more complicated.
New York has allowed certain nonresident students, including students without lawful immigration status, to pay resident tuition at SUNY and CUNY for more than two decades if they satisfy educational criteria tied to the state.
Among the existing paths, a nonresident student may qualify after attending an approved New York high school for at least two years, graduating and applying to SUNY or CUNY within the required period. Another path involves completing an approved New York GED program. Students without lawful immigration status must also file an affidavit concerning their intent to legalize their status when eligible.
Those rules are significant because they are written to cover nonresident students rather than simply declaring every undocumented person living in New York a resident for tuition purposes.
The Justice Department nevertheless argues that the educational criteria are sufficiently tied to New York residence to trigger § 1623. Its complaint notes that attendance at New York public high schools is itself generally tied to living within a school district and argues that the state is effectively using residence-linked criteria to provide a benefit unavailable to many U.S. citizens living outside New York.
New York is expected to contest that interpretation. A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state is confident its statute is lawful and emphasized the governor’s view that New York high school students should have an opportunity to pursue higher education in the state.
That disagreement illustrates why the legal fight cannot be reduced entirely to the slogan that undocumented students receive something American citizens cannot.
In New York, the tuition provision itself can apply to nonresident students who satisfy the statutory education requirements, including U.S. citizens. The federal government’s case instead depends on showing that the eligibility structure still amounts to a residence-based benefit prohibited by federal law.
Financial aid adds another layer.
New York’s José Peralta DREAM Act opened access to New York State-administered financial aid for eligible students without lawful immigration status. That can include programs such as the Tuition Assistance Program and other state awards for students who meet the relevant requirements.
Connecticut’s system is different. Much of the aid targeted in the federal complaint is institutional aid supported through tuition-revenue set-asides at public colleges, rather than one uniform state scholarship funded in the same way as New York’s programs.
Vermont, meanwhile, allows qualifying residents to use a separate application pathway for certain state-funded grants when they cannot use the federal FAFSA process because of immigration status.
Those differences make another common political claim too broad: there is no single funding mechanism under which an undocumented student in all three states receives the same taxpayer-funded subsidy at the expense of an out-of-state student.
The economic effect is still real. Resident tuition is often substantially lower than nonresident tuition, and losing eligibility could make college dramatically more expensive for affected students.
But in-state tuition is not legally defined as a reward reserved only for people who have personally paid state taxes. States generally use residence, domicile, high school attendance and other statutory criteria to determine who qualifies, and many beneficiaries are young students who have paid little or no state income tax themselves.
The administration has also argued that extending public benefits to people without lawful status can create incentives for illegal immigration.
That position draws support from broader congressional policy statements enacted in the 1990s, which said public benefits should not become an incentive for unlawful immigration. The complaints, however, do not establish that in-state tuition in New York, Connecticut or Vermont has actually caused people to enter the United States illegally.
Supporters of the state policies make the opposite practical argument: many of the students affected were brought to the United States as children, attended local schools and are already members of the communities whose public colleges they hope to attend.
That policy disagreement is separate from the statutory question the courts now have to answer.
The Justice Department has made clear that these suits are not isolated cases.
Its August 10 announcement said the New York, Connecticut and Vermont filings bring its nationwide total to 17 lawsuits challenging in-state tuition policies for undocumented students. The department says it has already obtained favorable orders in cases involving Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska and Illinois, while other cases remain pending around the country.
The administration therefore has a substantial litigation campaign underway, not merely a warning to three northeastern states.
But the filing of a complaint does not itself invalidate a state law.
The federal government is asking judges to declare the challenged provisions preempted by federal law and to block the states from enforcing them. Until a court issues such relief, the complaints remain allegations and legal arguments rather than final determinations that New York, Connecticut or Vermont has violated the Constitution.
The strongest version of the Justice Department’s case is straightforward: Congress expressly limited residence-based postsecondary benefits for people who are not lawfully present, and states cannot evade that federal restriction by defining residency rules in a way that still leaves out Americans from other states.
The states’ response is also narrower than the political rhetoric often suggests: they say these policies are designed to treat students who live, study and build their lives in the state as members of that educational community, and they dispute the federal government’s claim that their particular eligibility rules are preempted.
The courts will now have to decide where that line falls.
For Connecticut and Vermont, the explicit residency language will be central. For New York, the fight is likely to focus more heavily on whether high-school and other education-based criteria are legally equivalent to granting a benefit on the basis of residence.
So the most important fact about Monday’s lawsuits is not simply that the Trump administration has reached lawsuit number 17.
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It is that a national political fight over undocumented students is being converted into a much more precise legal question: when does a state’s definition of who belongs in its public higher-education system conflict with Congress’s restriction on residence-based benefits?
The answer will determine whether the three states can keep their current policies—and how much further the Justice Department’s nationwide campaign can go.
