LOS ANGELES – On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a district court ruling that denied immigrant students in Texas the opportunity to defend a law allowing them to pay the same tuition as most students at public schools and universities.
MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) appealed the decision to deny intervention on behalf of Students for Affordable Tuition (SAT), an association of students who would be forced to pay higher tuition because of their immigration status.
Please attribute the following statement to Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel:
“The 2-1 decision of the panel in the Fifth Circuit of Court Appeals on the Texas tuition-equity case is an extreme disappointment. The panel majority is now complicit in one of the greatest juridical travesties in recent history – the elimination in the course of one afternoon in early June 2025 of a duly-enacted state law of nearly a quarter century in duration based on collusion between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and now-deposed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. MALDEF, after further consultation with our clients, will be seeking further federal–court review.
“The panel majority has essentially written out of existence the right of intervention to permit integrally-interested parties to participate in all phases of a lawsuit, including discovery and full briefing of key motions. In the future, in the Fifth Circuit states at least, proposed intervenors will have to prove that they will win before having the most cursory of opportunities to participate in a case.
“In addition, the panel majority has perverted the Tenth Amendment to permit the federal government to secure any change in state policy it desires, so long as it is at least tangentially linked to an area of federal authority, such as the regulation of immigration. Under the panel majority’s reasoning, for example, a future Congress could require Texas to implement a state income tax if the state wants to be allowed to deny driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.”
MALDEF has also sought to intervene in tuition cases on behalf of students in Kansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma; the organization is working to protect access to affordable higher education for students who have lived, studied, and contributed to their communities for most of their lives.
Read more about this case and MALDEF’s work to defend tuition equity HERE.