DOJ Loses Lawsuit Over Minnesota In-State Tuition Policies

A Minnesota judge dismissed the federal government’s challenge to a state law in Minnesota that makes some undocumented students eligible for in-state tuition.

This is the first ruling against the Trump administration’s campaign to end in-state tuition for undocumented students—a policy that the government’s lawyers have argued violates federal laws. In three of the seven lawsuits so far, the states agreed with the administration and scrapped their state laws. 

But Minnesota challenged the Justice Department in court and sought to dismiss the lawsuit altogether.

At issue was whether a federal statute that bans undocumented students from receiving “any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit” pre-empts the state law. In Minnesota, students can receive the in-state tuition rate if they graduate from a state high school, live in a neighboring state or attend a Minnesota boarding school. Because the criteria don’t hinge only on Minnesota residency, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez ruled Friday that the federal law doesn’t pre-empt state law.

To bolster its case, the government pointed to recent cases in Texas and Oklahoma over similar in-state tuition policies in which the states reached agreements to scrap such laws.

“Aside from the fact they are non-binding, neither case is persuasive because the issues were not contested and thus the courts did not need to engage in meaningful analysis,” Menendez wrote.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison applauded the ruling in a statement, according to CBS News. 

“Today, we defeated another one of Donald Trump’s efforts to misconstrue federal law to force Minnesota to abandon duly passed state laws and become a colder, less caring state,” he wrote.