DOJ Sues Virginia Over In-State College Tuition for Illegal Immigrants

The case adds to lawsuits the Trump administration has brought against states that offer aid to illegal immigrants but not out-of-state U.S. citizens.

The University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, Va., on Oct. 12, 2022. Daxia Rojas/AFP via Getty Images

The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) is challenging a Virginia law that allows in-state college tuition rates for students regardless of their immigration status, the latest in a series of federal lawsuits targeting similar college access policies.

At the center of the Dec. 29 lawsuit is a provision in Virginia’s education code that grants in-state tuition to any student who attended a Virginia high school for at least two years and completed graduation requirements, or whose parents paid state taxes for at least two years. The law does not disqualify people who lack legal immigration status.

In its complaint, the DOJ argues that the provision violates federal law by extending a preferential rate to individuals illegally living in Virginia while denying the same benefit to U.S. citizens living outside the state.

“Federal law prohibits aliens illegally present in the United States from receiving in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens,” the DOJ said in its filing, which invokes the Constitution’s supremacy clause. “There are no exceptions.”

The Virginia case adds to a series of lawsuits the Trump administration has brought against states that offer college tuition aid to illegal immigrants.

The DOJ first sued Texas in June, followed by Kentucky, Oklahoma, Illinois, and California. The three Republican-led states quickly settled with the Trump administration after agreeing to revise their policies in line with federal demands, and Democratic-led Illinois and California are defending their laws in court.

Neither the office of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin nor that of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares responded to a request for comment. Both Republicans will leave office in January 2026, and it remains unclear whether the incoming Democratic administration will continue the legal fight or seek a settlement.

The lawsuits come in the wake of President Donald Trump’s February executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders.” That order instructed all federal agencies to “protect benefits for American citizens in need,” in part by ensuring that “no taxpayer-funded benefits go to unqualified aliens” and preventing federal programs from acting as a “magnet” for illegal immigration.

As part of the effort to implement Trump’s order, the federal government has scaled back access to several education-related programs based on immigration status. Notably, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services moved to restrict Head Start, an early childhood education program designed to support low-income families, to U.S. citizens only.

The U.S. Department of Education likewise updated its interpretation of federal rules, stating that tuition for dual-enrollment and similar early-college programs for high school students may now require a citizenship or immigration status check, “because those programs provide individualized payments or assistance beyond that of a basic public education.”

For now, those policy changes are on hold after federal judges in Washington and Rhode Island issued back-to-back injunctions in early September, siding with 20 states and the District of Columbia, which argued that excluding noncitizen children would harm low-income families and risk the “collapse of some of the nation’s most vital public programs.”