Immigration Fight Expands to In-State College Tuition
A federal appeals court and a federal district court have now read the same sentence of 1996 immigration law in opposite ways. Twenty-five Justice Department complaints, and tuition gaps of 19,930 to 30,432 dollars a year, ride on which reading survives.
Updated September 25, 2026. Every date, docket number and dollar figure below was read on that date from the court opinion, court order, agency release, statute page or university price sheet linked at the end. Nothing here is legal advice; it is a summary of filings that are public.
One sentence of statute is doing all of the work
The whole dispute turns on a single provision enacted in 1996 and effective July 1, 1998: 8 U.S.C. 1623(a). It says a person not lawfully present “shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State” for a postsecondary education benefit unless a U.S. citizen is eligible for the same benefit without regard to residence.
Read one way, that sentence voids any state law that hands unlawfully present students the resident tuition rate. Read another way, it voids only laws that key eligibility to residence itself — and most of the state laws in question do not. They key eligibility to something else: attending a high school in the state for a set number of years and graduating from it. Whether that distinction is real is now the entire case, and two federal courts have answered it in opposite directions.
July 9, 2026: an appeals court reads the sentence broadly
The Fifth Circuit, in No. 25-10898, affirmed the Texas judgment and held that Section 1623(a) preempts the challenged Texas provisions as applied to unlawfully present students. The panel was Smith, Willett and Ramirez. That is the first published appellate holding in the campaign, and it upheld a permanent injunction against Texas Education Code sections 54.051(m) and 54.052(a).
The Texas case was the template. The Justice Department filed it on June 4, 2025 in the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division, No. 7:25-cv-00055-O; the state agreed rather than defend, and the department announced the resulting judgment on June 5, 2025. A law that had stood since 2001 was gone in roughly 24 hours of docket time.
March 27, 2026: a district court reads it narrowly, and dismisses with prejudice
Nine months before the Fifth Circuit ruled, Judge Katherine Menendez dismissed the federal case against Minnesota with prejudice in United States v. Walz, No. 25-cv-2668 (D. Minn.). Her reasoning is the one every remaining defendant is now reaching for: Section 1623 requires a but-for causal link between residence and eligibility, and Minnesota’s statute does not supply one. In the court’s words, attending high school in Minnesota for at least three years and meeting the other requirements are not the functional equivalent of residing there.
The order did a second thing worth noting. It held the United States lacked standing to sue the governor and the attorney general at all, because a general executive responsibility is an insufficient connection to enforcement of a statute. That is a procedural defense available in every state whose tuition rules are administered by campuses and boards rather than by the governor.
The disagreement is about causation, not about immigration
It is worth being precise about what the two courts actually split on, because the political framing obscures it. Neither opinion turns on whether in-state tuition for undocumented students is good policy. Both turn on how tightly a state benefit has to be tied to residence before the 1996 sentence bites. The Fifth Circuit treats a high-school-attendance rule as residence wearing a different hat. The Minnesota court treats it as a distinct criterion that citizens and non-citizens alike can satisfy or fail.
That is a statutory-interpretation question with a clean answer available in either direction, which is exactly the kind of question that reaches the Supreme Court. It is also why counting wins and losses by state tells you less than reading which theory a given court adopted.
Twenty-five complaints, six resolved: the map as of September 10, 2026
By the Justice Department’s own count in its September 10, 2026 release, the campaign stands at 25 lawsuits, of which it describes six as resolved in its favor. Four new complaints were added in the 14 days between its August 27 and September 10 announcements. These are the department’s characterizations of its own docket, not an independent tally.
| Status | States | Key date |
|---|---|---|
| Resolved for the United States | Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas | Texas judgment announced June 5, 2025; Illinois injunction July 24, 2026; Kansas consent filings June 24, 2026 |
| Dismissed against the United States | Minnesota | March 27, 2026, with prejudice |
| Filed August 27, 2026, pending | Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington | Washington docketed as 2:26-cv-3041 |
| Filed September 10, 2026, pending | Hawaii, District of Columbia, Arkansas, Utah | newest filings in the campaign |
| Filed earlier, pending | Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Vermont, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado | Virginia announced December 30, 2025; New York, Connecticut and Vermont August 10, 2026 |
Six favorable outcomes out of 25 filings is 24 percent, and the arithmetic flatters neither side. Most of the six came from states that agreed to a consent judgment rather than litigate. The only case that went to a contested appellate ruling produced a win for the department; the only case that went to a contested merits ruling at the district level produced a loss.
What reclassification actually costs, in one academic year
Strip out the constitutional language and a student’s exposure is a subtraction. For academic year 2025-26, the College Board’s enrollment-weighted published price for a full-time undergraduate at a public four-year institution was 11,950 dollars in-state and 31,880 dollars out-of-state. The gap is 19,930 dollars a year, or 79,720 dollars across four years, before housing, books or fees beyond those included.
A caution on that figure. The National Center for Education Statistics publishes a different pair — 9,750 dollars in-state and 28,297 dollars out-of-state for 2022-23, a gap of 18,547 dollars — and its Fast Facts page shows 9,800 dollars for the same year. These are not contradictions. NCES is unweighted across institutions and uses the lower of in-district or in-state; College Board is weighted by enrollment; and the years differ by three. Where this article quotes a national average, it quotes the College Board 2025-26 series and says so.
Three price sheets, three different stakes
National averages understate the range, because the states with the biggest non-resident premiums are among the states being sued. These are each university’s own published figures for the current year.
| Published price | Resident | Non-resident | Annual gap | Four-year gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| National average, public four-year, 2025-26 | 11,950 | 31,880 | 19,930 | 79,720 |
| University of Minnesota Twin Cities, 2026-27 | 16,744 | 40,780 | 24,036 | 96,144 |
| University of Arizona, FY2027, tuition plus mandatory fees | 13,906 | 44,338 | 30,432 | 121,728 |
All figures in U.S. dollars, tuition and the fees each institution designates as mandatory, excluding housing, food, books and travel. The Arizona line is the one to sit with: the annual gap of 30,432 dollars is about 2.2 times that campus’s own resident price. Minnesota is in the table for the opposite reason — it is the state that won, and its students face the second-largest gap of the three if that win is reversed on appeal. Minnesota’s own 2026-27 increases were 3.8 percent resident and 4.5 percent non-resident, so the gap widens on its own each year regardless of how the litigation ends.
Tip: Families tracking a residency or tuition-classification question usually need the paperwork trail more than the commentary — enrollment letters, transcripts, proof-of-attendance records and appeal deadlines in one place. Browsing college planning organizer binders shows the category; your campus registrar sets the actual document list. (These are Amazon Associate links — we may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.)
The second federal lever, which is not a lawsuit
Litigation is the visible half. On July 10, 2025 the Department of Education rescinded a 1997 interpretation and issued a new one treating career, technical and adult education programs as federal public benefits under the 1996 welfare law, restricting them to citizens and qualified aliens. The department said it did not plan to enforce before August 9, 2025, and a litigation agreement extended a stay to September 10, 2025.
That rule reaches a different population through a different statute — 8 U.S.C. 1621, which defines postsecondary education as a state or local public benefit — and it does not require suing anyone. A student following only the tuition cases would miss it.
What is not in the public record
Three things a careful reader should know are missing, because filling them in with a guess is how this subject goes wrong.
- Enrollment counts. No federal data series counts undocumented students. IPEDS does not collect immigration status, and no NCES or GAO publication supplies a per-state figure. Numbers circulating in coverage come from advocacy organizations and should be labelled that way.
- The date the Texas judgment was entered. The June 5, 2025 announcement says a federal judge enjoined the provisions but gives neither the entry date nor the judge’s name.
- Appellate posture in most cases. Whether Minnesota appealed its dismissal, and whether Illinois sought a stay after its 14-day window, do not appear in any agency release located for this article.
Dates worth putting in a calendar
- July 24, 2026. The Illinois injunction was stayed 14 days to permit a stay application, which places any appeal on a clock that has already run.
- October 19–23, 2026. Eighth Circuit argument session in St. Paul. The published calendar for that week does not list a Minnesota tuition appeal.
- Mid-October 2026. The Eighth Circuit posts calendars roughly 30 days ahead, so the November 16–20 session list is the next place a Minnesota appeal would surface.
- Spring 2027 registration. Wherever an injunction has entered, the practical effect lands at the next residency-reclassification and billing cycle. No state has published a date for this; if your campus has, that date governs, not this article.
What each side still has to win
On the published record, the department has the stronger position in the Fifth Circuit and the weaker one everywhere the Minnesota reasoning is available, which is most of the remaining pending cases. Six of 25 resolved, nearly all by consent, is not the record of a theory that has been tested and held; it is the record of a theory that has mostly not been contested. The single contested merits ruling went against it.
The states, for their part, have a defense that works only if their statutes are actually drafted around high-school attendance rather than residence. That is checkable state by state, and it is the first thing to look up about your own state’s law before assuming either outcome. A state whose statute says the word residence is in the Fifth Circuit’s position whatever its politics.
The cheaper error, for a student, is to assume the classification could change and to keep the documentation that a residency appeal would require. The expensive error is to discover mid-term that a bill was recalculated at a rate 19,930 to 30,432 dollars a year higher, with no paperwork ready.
Filings, opinions and price sheets behind every figure above
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — No. 25-10898, opinion of July 9, 2026
- GovInfo — United States v. Walz, D. Minn. No. 25-cv-2668, order of March 27, 2026
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel — 8 U.S.C. 1623
- Office of the Law Revision Counsel — 8 U.S.C. 1621
- Federal Register — Executive Order 14287, 90 FR 18761, published May 2, 2025
- U.S. Justice Department — Texas complaint, June 4, 2025
- U.S. Justice Department — September 10, 2026 filings and the 25-lawsuit count
- U.S. Justice Department — August 27, 2026 filings
- U.S. Department of Education — interpretive change of July 10, 2025
- College Board — Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, Table CP-1
- National Center for Education Statistics — Digest table 330.20, 2022-23
- University of Minnesota — Twin Cities tuition rates, 2026-27
- University of Arizona Bursar — FY2027 tuition and mandatory fees
- U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit — argument calendars
- Washington Attorney General — federal litigation tracker
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