History, Supreme Court 1982 : The dissent agreed in principle that it was unwise for illegal alien children to be denied a public education, but the four dissenting justices argued that the Texas law was not so objectionable as to be unconstitutional; that this issue ought to be dealt with through the legislative process

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The U. S. Supreme Court in its 1982 case, Plyler v. Doe helped to avoid a great disaster and conflict but only for Elementary and High Schools.

 

The Supreme Court reminded us in this case why it's important not to foreclose public education to undocumented students : "Many of the undocumented children disabled by this classification will remain in this country indefinitely, and some will become lawful residents or citizens of the United States"

The U. S. Supreme Court continues in the concurrent opinion of the Majority :

"It is difficult to understand precisely what the State hopes to achieve by promoting the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime. It is thus clear that whatever savings might be achieved by denying these children an education, they are wholly insubstantial in light of the costs involved to these children, the State, and the Nation."

Supreme Court : Plyler v. Doe 1982 - From Wikipedia

A Texas statute denying free public education to illegal aliens violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because discrimination on the basis of immigration status did not further a substantial state interest. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed.

Court membership

Chief Justice

Warren E. Burger

Associate Justices

William J. Brennan, Jr. · Byron White

Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. · William Rehnquist

John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor

Case opinions

Majority Brennan, joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens

Concurrence Marshall

Concurrence Blackmun

Concurrence Powell, joined by Brennan, Marshall, Stevens

Dissent Burger, joined by White, Rehnquist, O'Connor

Laws applied

U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Tex. Educ. Code Ann. § 21.031

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a state statute denying funding for education to illegal aliens and simultaneously struck down a municipal school district's attempt to charge illegal immigrants an annual $1,000 tuition fee for each illegal alien student to compensate for the lost state funding[1]. The Court found that where states limit the rights afforded to people (specifically children) based on their status as aliens, this limitation must be examined under an intermediate scrutiny standard to determine whether it furthers a substantial goal of the State.

The application of Plyler v. Doe has been limited to K-12 schooling. Other court cases and legislation such as Toll v. Moreno 441 U.S. 458 (1979) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996[2] have allowed some states to pass statues that deny undocumented students eligibility for in-state tuition, scholarships, or even bar them from enrollment at public colleges and universities.

Summary

Revisions to education laws in Texas in 1975 withheld state funds for educating children who had not been legally admitted to the United States and authorized local school districts to deny enrollment to such students. A 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court found that this policy was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, as illegal immigrant children are people "in any ordinary sense of the term", and therefore had protection from discrimination unless a substantial state interest could be shown to justify it.

The court majority found that the Texas law was "directed against children, and impose[d] its discriminatory burden on the basis of a legal characteristic over which children can have little control" — namely, the fact of their having been brought illegally into the United States by their parents. The majority also observed that denying the children in question a proper education would likely contribute to "the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime." The majority refused to accept that any substantial state interest would be served by discrimination on this basis, and it struck down the Texas law.

Texas officials had argued that illegal immigrants were not "within the jurisdiction" of the state and could thus not claim protections under the Fourteenth Amendment. The court majority rejected this claim, finding instead that "no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment 'jurisdiction' can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful."

The dissent agreed in principle that it was unwise for illegal alien children to be denied a public education, but the four dissenting justices argued that the Texas law was not so objectionable as to be unconstitutional; that this issue ought to be dealt with through the legislative process; that "[t]he Constitution does not provide a cure for every social ill, nor does it vest judges with a mandate to try to remedy every social problem"; and that the majority was overstepping its bounds by seeking "to do Congress' job for it, compensating for congressional inaction".

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