The U.S. Supreme Court justices have chosen not to review a challenge to the California Supreme Court’s decision that it’s okay for the state’s colleges and universities to provide in-state tuition rates to undocumented immigrants, writes my colleague Mark Walsh over at The School Law Blog.
The November 2010 ruling by California’s highest court said that the state statute regarding tuition rates did not conflict with federal immigration law. The Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute begged to differ, and appealed that ruling.
Providing undocumented students with in-state tuition rates leads to an increase in college enrollment rates for that group of students and a decrease in the rate at which such students drop out of high school, according to a report released recently by the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. See coverage in The Chronicle of Higher Education of that report.