Judge: Florida Can't Impose Higher Tuition on Citizens Whose Parents Immigrated Illegally

A federal judge has ruled that Florida cannot deny in-state tuition rates to students who are U.S. citizens with Florida residency who can't prove that their parents have the legal right to live in the United States. The case is not about those students brought to the United States as children, the subject of much debate, but about students born in the United States who are by definition citizens. Florida's regulations requiring them to provide information about their parents' immigration status violate these students' rights, the judge ruled. The only issue that matters is the students' citizenship, ruled Judge K. Michael Moore. He noted that the benefits of higher education (admission and in-state tuition rates) "are properly viewed as attaching to the student and not the household." It is the students, not the parents, he added, who will have their names on the diplomas.