The U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint Wednesday against the state of Kansas, alleging it unlawfully awards in-state tuition to illegal aliens while denying the same benefits to U.S. citizens.
According to the complaint, Kansas law illegally discriminates against U.S. citizens by allowing illegal aliens to qualify for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities if they attended a Kansas high school for at least three years or graduated from a Kansas high school. By contrast, U.S. citizens must meet stricter requirements, such as 365 days of residency, and can lose in-state status if they leave the state after high school.
“For decades, the Kansas Legislature gave preferential treatment to illegal aliens over American citizens,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in a Department of Justice press release.
In February, Attorney General Kris Kobach warned Kansas would likely face a federal lawsuit if the tuition laws weren’t changed. Now, Kobach, a Republican, has proposed a consent decree that would make the current Kansas law invalid and unenforceable.
“This proposed consent decree demonstrates the quality of partnership between Kansas state leaders and the Department of Justice for the shared purpose of ensuring that federal tax dollars are not used to discriminate against Kansas’s lawful citizens,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Kriegshauser for the District of Kansas said.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, filed a motion Wednesday – the same day the lawsuit was announced – to intervene in the case and expressed her opposition to Kobach’s proposed agreement, claiming he is refusing to defend Kansas law against the federal government.
Kelly said she intends to become a defendant in the suit and believes overturning the law isn’t in Kansas’ interest since the Legislature failed to override her veto of Senate Bill 254, legislation barring illegal aliens from receiving in-state tuition and other public benefits.
“There are many ways that we could, and should, work together to fix this country’s broken immigration system,” she said in a press release announcing her intervention. “However, the federal government using its resources to target Kansans who were brought to the United States as children does nothing to solve the fundamental issues our nation faces.”
But Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division disagreed.
“Kansas’s unconstitutional and un-American laws should never have been passed in the first place and are prohibited by federal law,” he said in the DOJ press release.
The case against Kansas is the 10th lawsuit filed over laws that favor illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens. The DOJ has already won lawsuits in four states, while cases in Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, California and New Jersey are still pending.
“The Department of Justice has won on this exact issue in Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Nebraska, and we will take this fight to any states that fail to put American citizens first,” Shumate declared.
