Undocumented students ask judge to let them challenge sudden loss of in-state tuition

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

A group of undocumented students on Wednesday asked a judge to let them intervene in a case that revoked their access to in-state tuition, the first step in their ultimate goal of overturning the ruling.

The filing comes a week after the U.S. Department of Justice sued Texas over its 24-year-old law that allowed undocumented Texans who had lived in the state for three years and graduated from a Texas high school to qualify for lower tuition rates at public universities. Texas quickly agreed with the Trump administration’s claim that the law was unconstitutional and asked a judge to find the law unenforceable.

The quick turnaround — the whole lawsuit was resolved in less than six hours — represents a “contrived legal challenge designed to prevent sufficient notice and robust consideration,” lawyers for these students argued in their motion.

They’re asking U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor to allow them to join the lawsuit and argue for why the statute should remain in effect. The Justice Department and the Texas attorney general’s office oppose the motion on the grounds that the matter has been resolved and the case is terminated, court documents say.

O’Connor, the George W. Bush appointee who blocked the law, has long been a favored judge for the Texas attorney general’s office and conservative litigants. The Justice Department filed its lawsuit in the Wichita Falls division of the Northern District of Texas, where O’Connor hears all cases.

The people who are most impacted by a lawsuit typically have a right to have their voices heard on a case, said David Coale, a Dallas appellate attorney. Getting O’Connor to agree to reopen might be a tough sell, he said, but if they’re denied, they could appeal that ruling and the rest of the case alongside it, to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The 5th Circuit’s obviously a very conservative court, but part of that conservatism is a pretty limited view of the judicial role,” Coale said. “So if they get a chance to argue their case there … they may have some luck.”

The law, which has been in effect since 2001, grants in-state tuition to anyone who has been living in the state for three years and graduated from a Texas high school. All students who claim this benefit must sign an affidavit saying they intend to become U.S. citizens as soon as they are able; many of them are here as part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The motion lays out the human impact of the law’s sudden reversal — a man who is reconsidering his plans to go to medical school in Texas; a woman who will have to drop out of her masters program, where she was studying to become a counselor; a teacher-in-training who will have to delay her plans to graduate and begin working.

They are represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which said in a press release that the abrupt overturning of the law has left students scrambling.

“What happened last week – the invalidation of longstanding state law in the course of one afternoon – was an abuse of our judicial system,” said MALDEF President Thomas A. Saenz. “Those affected by the attempted invalidation have the right to be heard on the legality of the Texas Dream Act.”

---

Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O’Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer.

Get tickets.

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.