The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to scrap New Jersey rules allowing illegal immigrants to qualify for in-state tuition rates at public colleges, even though Americans living outside of New Jersey are charged higher tuition.
“Imagine being denied the opportunity of education in your own country,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said, according to a Department of Justice news release.
“By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, the state of New Jersey is doing just that,” he said.
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division added that “this is a simple matter of federal law: in New Jersey and nationwide, colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens.”
Federal prosecutors are suing New Jersey for offering qualifying noncitizen residents in-state college tuition and state-funded benefits, the latest state the Trump administration has accused of discriminating against out-of-state Americans in its anti-immigration crackdown.… pic.twitter.com/AlxkIX3OWB
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) May 1, 2026
“This Department of Justice will not tolerate American students being treated like second-class citizens in their own country,” he said.
The release said that the Justice Department has filed similar lawsuits against other states, with complaints in Texas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma being successful in ending policies that gave illegal immigrants reduced tuition.
The department is currently suing Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, Nebraska, and California, which have similar policies.
“Congress made a legislative judgment that illegal aliens in our Nation cannot receive resident tuition benefits that are denied to U.S. citizens residing in other states… There are no exceptions. Yet New Jersey has ignored this legislative command for over a decade,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit added that illegal immigrants can get in-state tuition rates even as out-of-state American citizens must pay a higher rate.
“These statutes blatantly discriminate in favor of illegal aliens over U.S. citizens from other states. Worse, such preferential treatment is squarely prohibited and preempted by Congress,” the complaint said.
“Federal law mandates that ‘an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State… for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit… without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident,’” it continued.
The complaint said multiple rules on the books should be wiped away.
“This Court should declare all four New Jersey laws and regulations challenged herein preempted and unconstitutional, and the Court should permanently enjoin the operation and enforcement of New Jersey’s laws and regulations treating illegal aliens in our Nation more favorably than United States citizens,” the complaint said.
DOJ sues New Jersey over laws giving illegal aliens in-state tuition, says citizens treated as ‘second-class’ | Greg Wehner, Fox News
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Thursday against New Jersey, challenging state laws that allow illegal aliens to receive in-state… pic.twitter.com/0GM7nwNs85
— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) May 1, 2026
The roots of the lawsuit were contained in an executive order issued in April 2025 by President Donald Trump that read, “Some measures to assist illegal aliens also necessarily violate Federal laws prohibiting discrimination against Americans in favor of illegal aliens.”
The order called on the Justice Department to “stop the enforcement of State and local laws, regulations, policies, and practices favoring aliens over any groups of American citizens that are unlawful, preempted by Federal law, or otherwise unenforceable, including State laws that provide in-State higher education tuition to aliens but not to out-of-State American citizens.”
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