The Plyler Problem

As the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the next legal dilemma could be whether the children of illegal immigrants are entitled to free public schooling. President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, is helping to push the issue to the forefront. In what the Times calls “a closed-door meeting” at Washington, Mr. Miller grilled Texas lawmakers as to why the Lone Star State is paying to educate the children of illegals.This is a moment to feature a Supreme Court precedent from 1982 called Plyler v. Doe. It requires states to educate the children of illegals. Legislators at Austin had considered, but failed to pass, a measure that would obligate Texas taxpayers to shoulder only the cost of educating schoolchildren who are either American citizens or “lawfully present” here, the Times reports. Mr. Miller wanted to know why the bill had failed.That was part of what the Times calls a “broader policymaking discussion.” One roadblock to Texas’s proposed bill, though, is Plyler, which reflects the views of a majority of but five justices and is facing renewed scrutiny. A Texas state representative, Tom Oliverson, reckons that “a lot of people” have come to find that the Plyler ruling “has some pretty faulty logic associated with it.” The Heritage Foundation calls Plyler “outlandish.” Other states, too, are taking a look at the Plyler precedent in the context of the high costs of educating the children of illegals. Tennessee lawmakers are considering a bill that would require “public and charter school officials to verify students’ immigration status at enrollment,” reports a researcher at Heritage, Corey DeAngelis. In the past year, he adds, lawmakers in Indiana, New Jersey, and Oklahoma “have pursued measures to contest Plyler.”Governor Greg Abbott appears to be of one mind with Mr. Miller when it comes to reappraising Plyler. “American citizens,” an Abbott spokesman says, should not be “forced to bear the cost of supporting those whose entry into this country began with breaking its laws.” The Plyler precedent requires the Lone Star State to educate more than an estimated 100,000 children of illegals, the Times reports, out of a total of 5.5 million public school students.Plyler arose after Texas passed a law in 1975 that “authorized local school districts to deny enrollment in their public schools to children” who were not “legally admitted” to America, Justice William Brennan wrote in the majority opinion. That law was deemed to breach the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Brennan failed to find “a rational justification for penalizing these children for their presence” in America.Denying education to the tots of illegals, Brennan said, “imposes a lifetime hardship on a discrete class of children not accountable for their disabling status.” He lamented that “the stigma of illiteracy will mark them for the rest of their lives.” Chief Justice Burger, joined in his dissent by three other justices, warned that “we trespass on the assigned function of the political branches” when “we assume a policymaking role as the Court does today.”Burger disagreed with the majority’s reasoning, finding that “the Equal Protection Clause does not mandate identical treatment of different categories of persons.” Education was critical, Burger wrote, but “the importance of a governmental service does not elevate it to the status of a ‘fundamental right’ for purposes of equal protection analysis.” Texas’s law, Burger wrote, could be justified as an effort “to prevent undue depletion of its limited revenues.”The issues posed in Plyler resonate 44 years later. The failure of Democratic presidents to control America’s borders has led to an influx of illegals that imposes significant burdens on the states, particularly in terms of schooling. Burger and his fellow dissenters saw no reason why “a state should bear the costs of educating children whose illegal presence in this country results from the default of the political branches of the Federal Government.”

The Plyler Problem

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