A federal judge has ruled that Illinois laws letting undocumented college students pay in-state tuition and receive state financial aid are unconstitutional, throwing two major education policies into legal limbo. Judge David W. Dugan said the tuition law and the Retention of Illinois Students & Equity, or RISE, Act cannot stand.
The ruling landed on a law that has affected undocumented students at Illinois public colleges and universities and on a financial aid program that was designed to help some of them keep paying for school. Under the RISE Act, students had to graduate from an Illinois high school, attend an in-state school for at least three years and pledge to file for permanent U.S. residency as soon as they were eligible.
The decision matters now because it changes the legal footing for a policy that had been in place for years and because the state’s response is still unclear. The lawsuit, filed last year by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Illinois and the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Division, named Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Attorney General Kwame Raoul and officials from several state colleges. Spokespeople for Pritzker and Raoul did not immediately respond when asked about the ruling or whether the state would appeal.
Dugan’s order was blunt. He found that Illinois allowing undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition at its public colleges and universities was “unconstitutional and invalid,” and he ruled against the RISE Act as well. The federal government argued in court that Illinois had gone too far in extending benefits to students who were not U.S. citizens.
U.S. Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft said the state had tried to “incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer's dime by treating illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law,” and said the ruling “enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.” Those comments signaled the federal government views the case as more than a fight over tuition rates; it is also a test of whether Illinois can keep offering benefits tied to residency and schooling status to undocumented students.
What happens next turns on whether Illinois appeals. For now, the judge has wiped out the legal basis for both the discounted tuition rule and the state aid program, leaving universities, students and state officials to wait for the next move in a case that could reshape access to college in Illinois.
