Tennessee Republican House members are putting a bill that would allow schools to deny enrollment to students based on their legal status on hold as it seeks guidance from the Trump administration.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth, the bill’s sponsor, expressed concern that Tennessee could lose approximately $1.1 billion in federal funding for education. There is concern that the bill, which gives public schools the option to check students’ legal residency status and the option to deny admittance to illegal immigrants, is in violation of federal law.
“We fully trust the Trump administration will not withhold federal dollars from our schools due to the passage of House Bill 793/Senate Bill 836,” Lamberth said. “However, out of an abundance of caution, we want to be exceptionally careful before we move forward to ensure no federal taxpayer dollars are at risk.”
The Tennessee Senate passed its own version of the bill that goes a step further, requiring students to provide proof of legal residency to enroll in public K-12 schools. It would allow, but not mandate, school districts to deny enrollment to students without proper documentation or charge them tuition.
The Tennessee bill directly challenges the 1982 Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe, in which the Justices ruled 5-4 that schools could not deny enrollment to any student not “legally admitted” into the United States. The ruling struck down a Texas law.
Right-leaning conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation have called on the Supreme Court to “reconsider its ill-considered Plyler v. Doe decision,” saying educating students in the U.S. illegally would balloon state and federal education budgets.
“This reconsideration is warranted because the large number of unaccompanied alien children and mass illegal migration have significantly changed circumstances for states and localities,” the Heritage Foundation wrote.
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The think tank noted how in the states of Arizona, California, New York, and Texas, the cost to absorb the influx of migrant children into public schools was estimated to cost almost three-quarters of a billion dollars in fiscal 2023 alone.
Meanwhile, students and advocates for immigrants have protested the legislation directly, calling out its defiance of a precedent set by the Supreme Court. “What’s undeniable is this: lawmakers have been forced to acknowledge the overwhelming, bipartisan opposition from across the state to targeting children and denying them an education,” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, told the Associated Press.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
