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• PAIGE: That has always been the fatal flaw in these challenges, that you can't go in and take something away from someone who's not a party to the lawsuit. So repeatedly, anti-immigrant groups that have tried to pursue lawsuits in validating dream acts like Texas's, have failed. And so YCT, a little clever here said, "Okay, fine, fine, undocumented students can have in-state tuition, but you got to give it to all students, regardless of whether they've been tax-paying Texans, living here, residing here, going to high school here." And that was the conundrum and why so much chaos erupted in result of the case.
  Welcome to the IDRA class notes podcast. I'm Paige Duggins-Clay, IDRA's Chief Legal Analyst. We're continuing our series of episodes on education and the law, where we work to uplift the stories behind landmark cases and laws impacting education civil rights. When young people are prepared for a productive and engaged future, they can contribute to our civic and economic prosperity as valuable employees, thoughtful leaders, and involved community members.

  For this reason, in 2001, then Governor, Rick Perry signed House Bill1403, commonly known as the Texas Dream Act. The bill expanded the longstanding Texas policy, allowing students who completed high school in Texas to access more affordable higher education through in-state tuition, regardless of their immigration status.

  By embracing this commonsense immigration policy, the Texas legislature was the first state to provide a pathway to a brighter future for our vibrant and diverse young people and the state's collective well-being.

  But this rare product of bipartisan policymaking is under attack.

  In July 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals released its long-anticipated decision, and young conservatives of Texas versus President Neal Smatresk and other administrators at the University of North Texas, or UNT.

  In its opinion, the court reversed a federal district court's decision barring UNT from collecting nonresident tuition from out-of-state students, rejecting YCT's assertion that federal immigration law prohibited states from setting reasonable and equitable tuition rates for its residents.

  As we'll discuss with today's guest, the district court's ruling cost UNT millions and threatened to compromise the integrity of the Texas higher education funding system. The litigation ultimately served as a thinly veiled anti-immigrant effort to overturn the Texas Dream Act.
  But for over two decades, a broad coalition of Texas businesses, community members, university, and student leaders have come together to support and defend the Texas Dream Act in recognition that Texas high school graduates, regardless of their immigration status, deserve an equal opportunity to go to college, that they contribute significantly to our state's economy.

  IDRA was proud to represent those stakeholders in the YCT versus UNT case alongside our partner, the President's Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, and submitting amicus briefs in defense of tuition equity for immigrant students.

  In today's podcast, we'll talk about the litigation challenge that sought to undermine immigrant students' rights to access higher education and how the case connects to other anti-immigrant efforts to attack and isolate immigrant students in education.

  I'm so, so appreciative that two brilliant attorneys representing one of IDRA's fantastic coalition partners, the President's Alliance, are joining us for the podcast today.

  First, I'm happy to welcome Monica Andrade, State Policy Manager at the President's Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. Welcome, Monica.

  MONICA: Hi everyone.

  PAIGE: I'm also thrilled to extend a special welcome to my friend and former co-clerk Michael Adams Hurta, a partner at Wright Close & Barger who served as counsel to President's Alliance in preparing an amicus brief for the case. Welcome, Michael.

  MICHAEL: Hi, happy to be here.

  PAIGE: All right, y'all, before we dive into our discussion about the case, I'd love the listeners to get to know both of you a little bit better. Monica, can you start us off? Tell us a little bit about the President's Alliance and what you do over there.

• MONICA: Of course. Thanks, Paige. So the President's Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization made up of over 550 presidents and chancellors of public and private colleges and universities.

  A little bit of history, the alliance was created back in 2017 to support and advocate for undocumented, international, and refugee students that are pursuing higher education.

  We bring together public and private institutional leaders and their campuses around immigration issues that are impacting their students, their campuses, and their communities.

  Key to our approach is that we engage at the federal, at the state, and campus levels to advance, change, and support our students. In my role at the state level, we are focused on supporting efforts to defend and to expand higher education access, affordability, and career equity to all students, regardless of their immigration status.

  We do this through coalition building with partners, through coordinating what's called the state equity table, and by providing education awareness campaigns for higher education leaders and campuses, and we also are tracking policy and providing resource development on our higher education immigration portal.

• PAIGE: That portal is one of the greatest resources on this topic, and I'm so grateful for President Alliance work to develop that and all the great work that you all do, both nationally and in collaboration with IDRA and other organizations. So glad to have you, Monica.

  And Michael, long time no see. As I mentioned earlier, you and I got to work together on the Texas Supreme Court, and I was so excited when I saw that you got connected to this case. Maybe you can share with our listeners a little bit about how you got to know the folks at the President's Alliance.

• MICHAEL: It was great to connect with you, too. And some background on myself. I am an appellate attorney here in Houston, Texas. Most people don't know what that means, but basically, I specialize in coming in after the first judge has taken a look at things. Then parties have a chance to appeal to a panel of judges, higher or above, and those judges are taking kind of a closer look at everything. They are there to take a deeper look at the law.

  I specialize in talking to those judges, basically. And so more often than not, that involves representing the parties directly in litigation, but sometimes it involves representing other parties, like we did here, who are just interested.

  The President’s Alliance had been monitoring this case well before I even knew it existed, I'm pretty sure. And somehow or another, when they decided they wanted to get involved, once the district court decision came in and it was being appealed, they got in contact with my firm, and I had worked on a number-- and my partner, Raffi Malconian, who was on this case with me, we'd worked on a number of amicus briefs together, both for paying and for pro bono clients, and have done a lot of work in the Fifth Circuit court of appeals, where this case was.

  So we were brought on to help with that, which is a nice full circle for me. One of my first legal jobs ever, my first summer in law school, I worked with the University of Texas' General Counsel Office. So, I don't work in education every day, but it's always been a little bit of an interest, and so it was a nice full circle.

• PAIGE: I love that. I so appreciate you specialize in talking to these judges as opposed to doing appellate judges, as opposed to doing discovery and trial work. I think a lot of the stuff that our listeners often associate with lawyering. And so maybe you sort of mentioned this thing called an amicus brief. I think that might be Latin or something like that. Just remind our listeners, what's an amicus brief, and why would an organization like Presidents' Alliance, or even IDRA want to do one?

• MICHAEL: So, amicus, it means friend of the court. And so, someone who's filing an amicus brief does not have a necessarily a direct interest in the case, but that gives them both the freedom to say other things, but also it's a benefit of the court to sometimes hear these other perspectives.

  Judges will tell you everywhere that their only job is to look at the law and say what the law is and what it means, that their job is not to think of the broader consequences. That's the job of the legislators or the congressmen that we elect and the president and the governors, but we're all human. We don't decide anything in a vacuum. And so—

  PAIGE: Speak for yourself, sir.

  MICHAEL: When I'm working on an amicus brief, my goal is to help make sure that the judges have the proper context leading into their decision. The context often is not going to directly lead to one outcome or another, but it's important for them to know as they're considering everything. That was our job here, particularly for President's Alliance. President's Alliance has specific interests and specific expertise on this issue. We could talk about this issue to the court and lend credence to what we're saying, because the president's alliance is experts in this issue in a way that even the parties in this case are not. So that's what we did.

• PAIGE: I really appreciate that, because especially in a case like this one, where, I mean, ultimately, many, if not all, cases involve policy and policy making, but this one really was about attacking and undermining a particular form of policy, using the courts to put pressure on and leverage the legal process to try to change state level policy.

  I really appreciate that. It was a critically important role, I think, both for Presidents' Alliance and for IDRA to step in and provide that broader context and perspective.

  I'm so appreciative that both of you are here to sort of walk us through that context, that ultimately, we believe, was influential in the court's decision.
  We'll dive into the content of those briefs and ultimately where the court ended up, but I just want to remind our listeners, this is the third in a series of podcasts that we've had on this topic, on this case, and on the students at UNT.

  If you want more background on the case and the lead up and some of the legal arguments made in the case, I want to encourage you to go and listen to the Texas Latino Business reports podcast recording on that topic and listen also to the IDRA class notes podcast recording with the UNT students that talk about their experience living through this case.

  For those who haven't yet had a chance to do that, Michael, maybe you could just give us the 50,000-foot view. What was really at issue in this case. We know that in April 2022, federal district judge appointed by President Trump issued a ruling that really had a staggering impact on UNT and really had the potential to impact the institutions of higher education across the state. Can you set it up for us a little bit? What was the court's order doing in that case?

• MICHAEL: I'll try and be pretty brief about it, but this was a case brought by the Young Conservatives of Texas, which is-- it's a group of young conservative activists, just like it sounds in Texas, but particularly the group as a whole, and some of their members who were students at UNT, and particularly they were out of state students, they were us citizens who lived in other states when they enrolled in UNT. And so they are complaining about-- they were complaining broadly about this tuition discrepancy.

  There is a federal law that was signed in the 1990s that essentially says, and I'm paraphrasing but it says that you can only give undocumented students a higher education benefit that's based on residence, only on their residence, if you're also giving that benefit to out of state students that are US citizens, not based on their residence.

  I am sure I am butchering that a little bit. But that is-- it is a very broad overview of what that law says. While these UNT students come in and they say, "Well, these undocumented students at UNT, they're getting in-state tuition, and we have to pay many times more in out-of-state tuition. We think that's wrong."

  They sued, and they sued specifically challenging Texas law that sets tuition-- sets it in different ways. First, there's setting kind of what resident tuition is, and then what out of state tuition is, and then there's a separate section that defines what a resident is for the purposes of tuition.
  They were only challenging what we think, "This is all unconstitutional, and the way we're challenging it is the out-of-state tuition rate. So, we think that you should not charge us out-of-state tuition."

  And the district court here said, "Yeah, I think that's right. I think this is all unconstitutional, and I'm going to grant your remedy."

  UNT, who was being sued, really, through their president and their administrators, "UNT and your administrators, you are now forbidden from charging out-of-state tuition under this statute because the whole scheme is unconstitutional." And so that's a very kind of quick overview of what happened and then obviously left UNT a little bit in a bind and the whole state in a little bit of suspense as we moved forward from there.

• PAIGE: This case has been so hard to talk about from its inception, both because of, I will hazard to say, the poorly drafted federal statute that has all sorts of prepositions and weird clause placements that make it a little bit hard to decipher, even using an equity lens. And it's, I think, doubly hard because the way that YCT went about this litigation was very, very different than they had done in so many other cases.

  Typically, they go straight for the jugular. They say, "Federal court, take away in-state tuition from undocumented immigrant students,". And I know, Michael, in a little bit, we'll talk a little bit about some things like standing and having a cause of action, right, but that has always been the fatal flaw in these challenges, is that you can't go in and take something away from someone who's not a party to the lawsuit, right? And so, over and over again, anti-immigrant groups that have tried to pursue lawsuits invalidating dream acts like Texas’, have failed on that ground.

  And so YCT was little clever here, in terms of going this backdoor way of saying, "Okay, fine, fine. Undocumented students can have in-state tuition, but you got to give it to all students, regardless of whether they've been tax paying Texans, living here, residing here, going to high school here." And that was the conundrum and why so much chaos erupted in result of the case.

  Well, maybe with sort of that background of how the case got there, we know that the district court judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and a big part of the briefs that both IDRA and President's Alliance submitted to the Fifth Circuit was really to try to educate the court on the history of the in-state versus out of state tuition, and why it's so important for colleges and universities to have the ability to set tuition to pay for the cost of educating young people.
  Michael, I know this is a big part of the President's Alliance brief, and you did a lot of research digging in on the history of this dichotomy. So maybe you could tell our listeners just a little bit about that. Why is it that every university in the country allows students who reside or live or otherwise pay taxes there to get in-state tuition and requires out-of-state students to pay higher tuition?

• MICHAEL: in-state versus out-of-state tuition is almost as old as the idea of the state public university itself, and it really started there. State universities were started by different state legislatures and by even their constitutions in the case of Texas as really just universities-- "Hey, we have our citizens and our state. We should educate our residents. And we should do it for free if we can or at least pretty cheaply." And so that's what they did for a while.

  There was kind of no law at first about what in-state or out-of-state tuition is, but then eventually, the universities grew, and people started being interested in coming from other places. Once that happened, there was this decision, "Well, what do we do about these people? These people coming in from other places are not paying our state taxes, they're not contributing as much. Do we charge them the same amount?" And so, some of them started to charge more for out-of-state students both kind of for that fairness reason. Then also, they realized, "Hey, this raises money. This is going to help us pay for our in-state students and pay for their education." And so it started with those kind of twin goals in mind and kind of went from there pretty early.

  Then, even the states that didn't necessarily-- even if they did not have that full policy rationale that they needed to do it for, they wanted to at least go tit for tat. If other states were going to charge their students higher tuition, well then they would also charge higher tuition.

  Some state statutes were written just like that. For example, if you were a student in Ohio who wanted to attend the University of Oklahoma in 1925, then your tuition would be set based on what an Oklahoma student would be charged at Ohio State University. That's exactly what the Oklahoma statute said at the time because it was just a tit for tat. It had nothing to do with undocumented students at all.

  That just kind of came to be part of it because it was based on whether people lived in-state or out-of-state. And it didn't involve citizenship at all. And so, it kind of folded in whether you're a citizen or not, whether you're an immigrant or not, are you a resident of the state?

• PAIGE: I feel like there's like a joke there about-- I knew enough about football, Ohio, and Oklahoma, but we'll just let that go. I'm sure our listeners can send us some comments, missed an opportunity there.

  That's super fascinating. And I think everybody - particularly those who have been to or about to send young people to college - know that it's expensive. The cost of higher education continues to rise for a variety of reasons.

  So, the ability to get in-state tuition is a critical component of promoting and providing access to college for young people, and it's also a recognition. Like in IDRA's brief, we wrote this language around, you must make a down payment to the state. Higher education is expensive. And the people of Texas fund these public institutions through their tax dollars, which regardless of your citizenship status, you pay taxes that then go to fund these institutions.
  If you are contributing to the economy and the tax base of the state, you should then have the right to reap the benefits of it and, common sense folks generally understand that.

  I think that also is sort of the backdrop for you, Monica, to help orient us to-- Michael previewed that this is a longstanding policy, the in-state, out-of-state dichotomy, that it's about economic opportunity, a recognition of the investments that residents have made.

  Can you talk a little bit about the background of the movement to make sure that immigrant students and immigrant families were included in the opportunity and the ability to access higher education through in-state tuition?

• MONICA: Of course, and -- different states have different backgrounds or histories of how their movement started, but I will say that the movement in many of the states started in large part thanks to a sustained and documented youth activism in the work many local state organizations have done and continue to do.

  By way of background, I was formerly undocumented and navigated higher education undocumented. And when I was a sophomore in college in Arizona, I forget the proposition now, but they passed the law that if you were undocumented or if you didn't have a lawful presence, you couldn't qualify for in-state tuition, and I was in school when that happened.

  Just recently, Arizona passed an in-state tuition law, and so seeing that come full circle, that was all because of the work that advocates, students, and organizations did in Arizona for decades to try to make that happen. I want to go back a little bit to the history that Michael talked about on the federal laws because it is important here.

  In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. We have a lot of acronyms in immigration. And so, it restricted states' ability to provide residency and in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students.

  Like Michael said, the law prohibited states for making undocumented students eligible for postsecondary education benefits based on residency, unless a US citizen from another state would also be eligible for that benefit.

  Then separately, under the Higher Education Act of 1965, undocumented students don't qualify for federal financial aid. So even if you can access higher education, there's another barrier that students face there.

  Then states began to pass state laws that conformed with those federal laws, and those efforts have allowed many undocumented young people to attend institutions of higher education, particularly after the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or the DACA program back in 2012. As I do this work and I go to conferences or talk to people, many people are shocked to hear that Texas was the first, and it led the way in defining a path for undocumented students to access higher education. And I know you're going to talk a little bit more about that, Paige.

• PAIGE: Thank you first, Monica, for sharing. I can see the personal connection that you have to this case and to this issue and you and your organization's great work, and I think it just brings the importance of this policy area into really, sharp focus.

  As you previewed, Texas was the first state under Governor Rick Perry, a very bipartisan effort, recognizing that this was about not only the economic prosperity of the state and the benefits that undocumented and immigrant families bring to the table in terms of their ability to contribute and thrive but also for the individual dignity of young people.

  And so, a broad coalition, again, of stakeholders came together to create the Texas Dream Act and to pass it. As we've sort of previewed, the focus here is not on residency because of the pretty clear, specific language as our organization calls that federal immigration law, but instead focused on the broader context, a young person who not only lives in the state, but graduates from a Texas high school, and that that would be a deciding factor. It is not tied to a person's immigration status. It's broadly applicable to any student, regardless of their status.

  And that was the Texas Dream Act, really becoming a model for so many other states to follow suit. And so, Texas was the first. Monica, can you give us-- what's the current context? How many states have now gone down a similar path?

• MONICA: This is always my favorite part. For a little bit more context, there's about 408,000 undocumented students that are currently enrolled in US colleges and universities. And over the last two decades, individual states have made significant strides in expanding in-state tuition and state financial aid to undocumented students.

  As I said, recently Arizona, Massachusetts, but currently 24 states and D.C. have extended in-state eligibility to their state's undocumented students. And then of those states, 18 and DC also provide access to state financial aid.

  The state policies regulating eligibility for in-state tuition vary widely across the US, but I will always talk about our portal. If you go to our higher ed immigration portal, it has information about all the states' policies and includes a benchmark. It assesses where the state falls given what their policy is. And so it does, for example, from comprehensive access to some states have prohibitive enrollment, where if you're undocumented, you can't even enroll in the state's institutions. Check out the portal.

• PAIGE: Love that tool. We'll be sure and share that with our listeners and really appreciate this big picture landscape.

  In Texas, as in so many states-- Texas was the first. And of course, there were detractors. Though this was a broad bipartisan, and continues to enjoy broad bipartisan support, there have been attacks over and over again in the Texas legislature to try to repeal or undermine or otherwise weaken that law that have been beaten back time and time again for over two decades.

  This litigation was unique, as Michael was previewing for us earlier, because it sought to use the court process, the legal process, to put some pressure on the Texas legislature to repeal the law, and they did that by exploiting sort of the economic impact of the remedy employed that the district court ordered.
  Michael, can you talk a little bit about what has the state of Texas committed to in terms of funding and providing for higher education access, and if we can maybe connect that to and how did YCT exploit that in getting an order prohibiting UNT from collecting out-of-state tuition?

• MICHAEL: Texas in its constitution, which was drafted in 1876, has kind of placed importance on higher education for all its residents, really, since then. And partially in its constitution and in just other actions that Texas does, Texas is continuously committed to wanting to educate its populace writ large.
  Kind of in this closing-the-gap plan that, I believe, a couple of decades ago kind of was started wanting a 15-year plan--, sorry, it was 2015 that this plan kind of started that wanted to increase the amount of Texans who are attending college and getting college degrees. They wanted to get it to 60% of all Texas students to achieve some sort of higher education by 2030.

  Now, 60% of all students, technically, one could do that without undocumented immigrants, but all sorts of immigrant-origin students are almost a third of students in higher education in Texas. So, it's been critical to meet that goal. So just kind of little bit of that background.

  Then, of course, there's also a funding problem. College is not cheap, as we all know, especially now. And especially in recent decades, out-of-state tuition has become critical in funding our universities and in keeping tuition at a reasonable level-- some would say still unreasonable, but at least an arguably reasonable level for in-state students.

  And so it's the difference, the delta, between out-of-state tuition collected and in-state tuition collected is millions of dollars. Really, of all the net tuition that's collected, if you just look at Texas residents and non-Texan, nonresidents who are attending Texas schools-- but not out-of-country residents. Take out out-of-country residents. Just look at Texas residents versus other state residents attending Texas schools.

  Nonstate citizens are 4% of all enrollments in Texas schools, but they are 17% of all tuition given. That's a huge delta, a huge increase. And so, the direct effect of the court's order here just took away that out-of-state tuition for UNT because it was only ordering UNT to stop collecting it. But if you applied the reasoning of that order to every public university, that's tens of millions of dollars just instantly off the books every year.

• PAIGE: At IDRA, we analyzed how much institutions across the state could lose if they were subject to the district court, a similar order that the district court did in UNT's case. And so at UNT, we looked at nearly $9 million of lost revenue just in one year of operations.

  UNT great school, but smaller. UNT has a more local, more Texan population. If you look at a school like UT, for example, which does have a-- I think a more diverse in terms of international representation and out-of-state representation than UNT looking at over $30 million of lost revenue for that institution.
  Similar numbers for other large flagship universities. So, huge pain point, particularly when we know, that the legislature has not been keeping pace with the cost of higher education and has not been adding more funding for schools.

• MICHAEL: Paige, one important note, both you and I had conversations about these numbers when we were writing our amicus briefs. These numbers are 2024 numbers. They don't speak to 2034, 2044, and be much worse than, I would assume.

  I found a graph from the University of Texas comparing in-state tuition versus out-of-state tuition, since, the early 2000s, and you could see that UT was trying to keep in-state tuition from rising too much. And that line was mostly flat. Not completely, but as close to flat as you might hope for until 2016 or something like that.

  The out-of-state tuition line was straight line up because to keep that bottom line flat, we had to keep increasing out-of-state tuition, and I expect we might have to continue doing that. It's those numbers now and higher numbers in the future that would be impacted.

• PAIGE: And that's a perfect segway. There are many interesting things about this case for everybody - lawyers, and policy wonks directly impacted young people, but I think an interesting issue is a fact that at the core of this case, was a question about the state's ability to set policy around tuition and to manage its constitutional obligation, in Texas case, to provide higher education access and its ability to make choices like, "We're going to make out of state students pay a lot more money," as you said, going back to Oklahoma's 1915 law.

  There were many legal issues, but that is a key focus, I think, of the Fifth Circuit and looking at the balance of whether federal law prohibited Texas from having a policy like this in place. And so, Michael, I know a lot is going on in that opinion, but maybe you could give us a high level-- what did the Fifth Circuit say about YCT's challenge? Were they, our friend? We submitted amicus briefs in this case.

• MICHAEL: In this case, they made clear that it was just this case. There are kind of a couple issues in this case, one I'm not going to spend much time on because it's not as substantive. But it was this first idea of can YCT and these students sue about this? And the basic answer that the Fifth Circuit came up with was, yes, they can.

  Let's assume that they're right for this analysis. If they are, and that if the federal law preempts the Texas law here and means that the Texas law is wrong under federal law, then this suit is an appropriate one for them to bring.

  They are harmed by having to pay higher tuition. And if they are right that means that the out-of-state tuition should be taken off the books, that fixes their harm. So just on that top level, they're allowed to bring suit.

  So that was the first thing the Fifth Circuit did. But then the Fifth Circuit took a closer look at the statute, the statute that says undocumented students may not receive benefits based on residence unless US citizens are eligible for those same benefits. And what they basically said at a high level is that regulates the tuition of undocumented students.

  What YCT is challenging here is the tuition of out-of-state students. What YCT is challenging is not preempted by the federal law. The federal law says nothing about tuition for out-of-state students. And so that stands. And I know we want to talk about some of the limits of this holding in the big one, though, is that they were very clear that that's all they were saying. We're not opining on the statute, for instance, that defines what a residence is for the purpose of tuition. They specifically did not say anything about that.

  PAIGE: In other words, YCT may have an injury. My son is 18. He's about to head off to UT Austin. And I'm getting the bills for how much it's going to cost. Certainly, we can all feel harmed by that. So assuming that that's the case, they basically chose the wrong setup for this case.

  The law that they were trying to use to get this invalidated did not basically apply to fix the remedies that they were ultimately seeking. And that is interesting because that is a continuation, I think, of many of the cases and many of the efforts to try to litigate these policies in the past. But what I hear you saying is there's potential for another legal case, though we haven't seen one materialized yet.

• MICHAEL: There is always that potential, particularly with this opinion where they--, they didn't say it in these words, but they're a couple of parts of the opinion that says, "Well, maybe this other statute is preempted." And then they wave their hands up in the air as if they didn't know, but they said it wasn't for them in this case to rule upon because no one was asking them to rule on that way.

  Who knows what they would say when asked? And there would be a ton of other questions that they would have to answer if they were asked.
  The one other kind of note with the opinion is after the opinion was unanimous with a three-judge panel. But then after a three-judge panel hears something, the party who loses has a chance to say, "Oh, well, maybe, can the entire court hear this matter? Maybe you're wrong, three judges," and the rest of the court will say so.

  In the Fifth Circuit, there were 16 judges on the entire Fifth Circuit at the time. And so they asked, "Hey, 16 judges, will you reconsider this?" 15 out of the 16 said no. There was one judge, Judge Ho, who said that he would rehear it and said that he thought that this opinion was wrong, basically agreeing with everything YCT was saying.

  That is only 1 out of 16 judges on a very ideologically conservative, most would say the most ideologically conservative court in the country and one of the more conservative judges, unsurprisingly on that court. I don't necessarily think that portends to more challenges in this way, but it does leave still open that question. Are there other ways that this law is going to be challenged?

• PAIGE: Absolutely. And I do think it's remarkable. Certainly, as attorneys who work on civil rights education issues in the Fifth Circuit, it felt really good to be validated in that way. At several points in the court's opinion, it said very directly that YCT was inappropriately trying to rewrite federal law to get at a policy that just was not at issue in this case. And I think one of the rare moments where the rule of law did prevail and has made sure that the legal process, the court's legal process was not interfering with well-settled policy.

  That being said, I don't think we have to wait for another legal challenge, right, Monica? And the court case and the plaintiffs and their lawyers are certainly not waiting in terms of trying to drum up support for their anti-immigrant position.

  Monica, can you bring us back? We are headed into a legislative session next year in Texas, and indeed in legislative sessions across the country, which undocumented students and immigrant families continue to be attacked and demonized as part of the broader political rhetoric. And we know it's having harmful and detrimental impacts on our young people.

  Can you talk a little bit about the current climate and what we're seeing at the state policy level in terms of attacks on tuition equity and immigrant students’ rights to education?

  MONICA: As you said, we're seeing a lot of crosscutting trends at the state level. So including both states that are seeking to expand opportunities so where they already have an in-state policy and they want to expand the policy so that it covers more students and then states that are seeking to restrict access, and so that's whether in the form of anti-immigration or other measures.

  We are seeing instances where states are experiencing a rise in anti-immigration policies, including targeting tuition equity policies. So, I'll talk about-- because my role is state policy, when we think about the future of state policy and the future of tuition equity beyond defending tuition equity, when we see these attacks, there's an urgent need to accept expand tuition equity to all eligible students in the states that have not yet passed such legislation, regardless of immigration status or enacted such policies.

  There are limited measures, or they have limited measures where it's only for DACA recipients, for example. And we also know that the number of students with DACA or DACA eligibility is continuing to decline, in large part because of where the DACA litigation is at right now and because of the program's lack of updates to include individuals who arrived in the US after 2007, which is the specified eligibility date.

  The example that I like to use when I do presentations is if someone arrived in the US at the age of four in 2008, for example, they would be of college age but not eligible for DACA. And so I think, ultimately, when we think about the state policies and really at all levels, I think we need to redouble our efforts to support these students, whether it's at the campus, at the state, or the national level.

• PAIGE: Absolutely. And for us at IDRA, and I think this is true at President's Alliance as well. We believe unequivocally that all young people deserve the opportunity and have the right to access and achieve in higher education and indeed an education across the system. But we know that those arguments aren't always compelling to all the stakeholders who are important in this broader policy debate.

  So, acknowledging first just the inherent dignity and worth and the need for opportunity for these young people and their families. Monica, maybe you could close us out as we continue to see these attacks and anti-immigrant rhetoric particularly going into this election season. Why is it that folks should care? Maybe folks who don't identify as immigrants or don't have immigrants in their family, why should they nonetheless support these policies?

• MONICA: I think at the core is really looking at the intent and the impact of the lays. And it's really about access to education. And so the laws really help young people who came to the US at a young age and have completed school. They're part of our neighborhoods, they're part of our communities, and they have this hope of going to college, but then suddenly discover that they face barriers to accessing higher education, whether it's in state tuition or state financial aid.

  So, extending in state tuition to undocumented students in states would provide greater access to them for higher education for a significant portion of the population. And especially providing access to state financial aid to undocumented students would result in reduced high school dropout rates. We've seen the data, right? It would result in increased college enrollment and greater student achievement for these students.

  Ensuring tuition equity would also allow talented and motivated individuals who've grown up in the state. I say this over and over, but they are a part of our communities to pursue their educational goals and contribute to the local workforce.

  There's a lot of reports, a lot of studies of the economic growth that would happen. So, by extending in state tuition to undocumented students, state really invests in the education and skills development of its own residents, which can have long term economic benefits for the states.

  I think most importantly, and I know we say this doesn't always move people, but it's true, these students are an important part of the social fabric of the states in which they live in, and by investing in their education, states create a more inclusive and cohesive society.

• PAIGE: Thank you, Monica, for those are perfect words, I think, to leave our listeners with.

  I particularly want to thank you and Miriam and the President's Alliance for your incredible partnership. It felt very lonely, I think, in the litigation because it felt there was so much at stake and really working hard to translate, as Michael did, the convoluted legal case into talking points and messages to mobilize that directly impacted community members and all of the stakeholders.

  I want to thank the President's Alliance for being such a wonderful partner in the case and beyond in the broader policy landscape. And Michael, thank you so much for taking time. I know you're a busy partner at an appellate law firm but thank you for your work on behalf of the President's Alliance for being a good partner and friend to IDRA as well in the case. And we'll look forward to working with both of you on this and other issues in the future.

  MONICA: Likewise. Thank you.

  MICHAEL: Yeah, thanks for having us on.

  PAIGE: Thanks, guys. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in to this IDRA class notes episode about the YCT versus UNT case. You can find additional resources, and information, and read the briefs that IDRA and President's alliance put together on our website. Y'all take care.

  Thank you for listening to IDRA Classnotes. For more information on IDRA and other Classnotes topics, go to www.idra.org. You can also send us your thoughts by email to podcast@idra.org.