Source:
Reuters(Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to a California law that gives illegal immigrants the same in-state college tuition rates as legal state residents, another contentious issue in the nation's immigration policy debate.
The justices refused to hear an appeal by group of out-of-state U.S. citizens after the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law and dismissed their lawsuit.
The 2001 law provides that any student who attends a California high school for three years and graduates can get in-state college and university tuition. Illegal immigrants who qualify must swear they will seek to become U.S. citizens.
Nine other states, including New York, Texas and Illinois, have adopted similar laws. Opponents said California unlawfully discriminated against U.S. citizens in favor of illegal immigrants and said the case involved a question of great national importance.
Read more:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/06/us-usa-immigration-education-idUSTRE7553KV20110606
The state Supreme Court case was
Martinez v. Regents of the University of California; from a
of that case:
In 2001, the California Legislature enacted Government Code section 68130.5. That statute exempts students, including those “without lawful immigration status,” from having to pay out-of-state tuition if they meet certain requirements.
These requirements include “(h)igh school attendance in California for three or more years,” “(g)raduation from a California high school or attainment of the equivalent thereof,” and, for those without lawful immigration status, “the filing of an affidavit . . . stating that the student has filed an application to legalize his or her immigration status, or will file an application as soon as he or she is eligible to do so.”
In this lawsuit, plaintiffs, United States citizens who were forced to pay out-of-state tuition to attend California state colleges and universities, claim that to the extent section 68130.5 applies to persons not in this country lawfully, it violates (or, to use a term that might be used at oral argument, is “preempted by”) federal immigration law in various ways. If they are correct, then section 68130.5 would be invalid because federal law prevails over state law in this situation.
That decision was unanimous in a Republican-dominated court.
Kris Kobach, secretary of state of Kansas and legal counsel for the Immigration Law Reform Institute, was a plantiff in the original lawsuit.
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