A Trump-appointed federal judge has permanently barred Illinois from giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition and financial aid, ruling the state's RISE Act and DREAM Act violate federal law.
U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn of the Southern District of Illinois ruled that the state's signature immigrant tuition programs are unconstitutional, granting the federal government's motion for summary judgment and denying Illinois' motion to dismiss. The order permanently bars enforcement of the RISE Act and the Illinois DREAM Act, though McGlynn gave the state 14 days to seek relief from an appeals court before the ruling takes full effect.
The laws let students who are unlawfully present in the country, but who attended and graduated Illinois high schools, pay the same discounted tuition rate as Illinois residents at public universities. The RISE Act extended that further, opening state financial aid to students ineligible for federal assistance because of their immigration status. The Illinois DREAM Act created scholarship funds specifically for them.
McGlynn found that arrangement cannot survive a plain reading of federal statute. Congress prohibited states from granting unlawfully present immigrants a residency-based education benefit unless that same benefit is available to every American citizen, regardless of what state they live in. Illinois' tuition break was never available to a citizen from Indiana or Missouri paying full freight. It was available to someone in the country illegally, so long as they graduated an Illinois high school. That is the exact arrangement Congress barred, and the judge said so without much room for argument.
The Justice Department sued Illinois over these laws last September, arguing the tuition and aid programs violated the Constitution's supremacy clause by conflicting with federal immigration statute. U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft, whose office in the Southern District of Illinois brought the case, said the state "sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer's dime" by treating illegal aliens better than American citizens who happened to live elsewhere. He called the ruling an enforcement of the statute Congress actually wrote, not a policy preference invented by the department.
This is not an isolated skirmish. The DOJ has now brought similar challenges against several states offering residency-based tuition breaks to immigrants without legal status, and courts have been receptive. Illinois joins that list as one of the more prominent losses, given the scale of its programs and the political weight Gov. JB Pritzker put behind them when he signed the RISE Act expansion. Pritzker has built a national profile partly on positioning Illinois as a safe harbor for immigrants regardless of status, courthouse protections included. A federal judge just told him the tuition piece of that agenda runs headlong into federal law.
Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, welcomed the decision. "This is a win for Illinois taxpayers and American students who were shut out while Pritzker prioritized foreigners in our country illegally," Miller said, according to Just the News. That is the plain political read Republicans are drawing from the case: money and access that could have gone to citizens went instead to people with no legal right to be in the country.
What happens in the next two weeks
Illinois has not said whether it will appeal to the Seventh Circuit, and a spokesperson for Pritzker's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment reported by outlets covering the ruling. The 14-day stay McGlynn attached to his order means the RISE Act and DREAM Act remain technically on the books for now, but universities and state financial aid administrators have to plan for the near-certainty that both programs disappear once the window closes.
For families who built college plans around those benefits, that is not an abstract legal dispute. It is a tuition bill that could double or triple depending on the school. For Pritzker, it is another example of a marquee immigration policy landing in front of a federal judge and not surviving contact. The DOJ's broader lawsuit against Illinois over its sanctuary policies is still moving through the courts, and this ruling gives federal lawyers a concrete win to point to heading into that fight. Illinois' next move, appeal or comply, will show whether the state intends to keep contesting federal immigration law in court or start rewriting its statutes to match it.
Also read: Justice Department sues Colorado over in-state tuition for illegal immigrants • Full Fifth Circuit Rules Illegal Aliens Have No Right to Roam Free • DHS Has Fined Illegal Immigrants Who Defied Deportation $84 Billion
