The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Massachusetts to stop public colleges and universities from offering in-state tuition and financial aid to non-citizen students living in the state without authorization.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, targets Massachusetts’ “Tuition Equity Law,” which went into effect three years ago. That law expanded in-state tuition to public higher ed institutions for those who attended a Massachusetts high school for at least three years, regardless of legal status.
The DOJ filed a similar lawsuit against Rhode Island on Monday. The DOJ flagged its “Rhode Island Student Success Act,” signed in 2021, under the same argument as its suit in Massachusetts.
The two states are the latest of a dozen states the DOJ’s civil division is suing over in-state tuition policies. In Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Nebraska, federal judges sided with the DOJ, blocking the states’ existing statutes.
In a press release, the DOJ said the laws “unconstitutionally discriminate against U.S. citizens who are not afforded the same reduced tuition rates or scholarships, create incentives for illegal immigration, and reward illegal aliens with benefits that U.S. citizens are not eligible for, all in direct conflict with federal law.”
Named in the Massachusetts lawsuit is the state Board of Higher Education and its commissioner, Noe Ortega. WBUR has reached out for comment.
The states where similar suits are pending include California, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia, Kansas and Minnesota.
While the lawsuit takes aim at all public colleges and universities in Massachusetts, the case filing zeroed in on differing tuition rates between in-state versus out-of-state students — regardless of legal status — at Bridgewater State University and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, or MassArt.
It also names a number of Massachusetts scholarship programs that are open to non-citizen students.
According to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, an initiative from a coalition of American college and university leaders, 20 states currently offer discounted in-state tuition to students without legal documentation.
Sarang Sekhavat, chief of staff for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, said the filing of the federal lawsuit was a “question of when, not if.”
“This has been part of what this administration has been doing, targeting any jurisdictions that have any laws that really try and treat immigrants just as regular people,” he said.
When advocates urged for the passage of the Tuition Equity Law, about 400 graduating seniors without legal authorization were eligible each year for in-state tuition or financial aid at a public college or university, he said.
“As a state, we have the freedom to decide who goes to our schools and who gets support at our schools,” Sekhavat said. “To try and get more people into our schools is really what we’re trying to do and expand educational opportunity.”
