Trump’s DOJ lawsuit targeting undocumented student tuition could face tougher scrutiny in Minnesota

The U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking to scrap Minnesota’s policy making undocumented students eligible for college tuition benefits is the latest in the Trump administration’s broader attack against immigrant-friendly states and higher education institutions.

But despite the administration’s recent success on the issue in other states, Minnesota could be a tougher opponent.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, is the third attempt this month by President Donald Trump to roll back the programs that his associates argue run afoul of federal law by discriminating against out-of-state students who are citizens.

“No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a news release announcing the legal action.

The Justice Department argues Minnesota is “flagrantly” violating the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act that restricts non-U.S. citizens from receiving any type of federal government benefit or funding, including discounted tuition if the state doesn’t offer the same to a citizen.

But since the federal law’s passing, Minnesota and several other states created a “workaround” of sorts, said Ana Pottratz Acosta, a professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, by making students eligible for in-state tuition if they met certain criteria, like graduating from a Minnesota high school, compared to solely relying on the student’s resident status as the 1996 law required.

“Based on prior case law, the argument that Minnesota would have is fairly strong to defend the lawsuit,” Pottratz Acosta said.

Under the 2013 Minnesota Dream Act, undocumented applicants were eligible for in-state tuition rates if they attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years and received a diploma or GED in Minnesota. The law further requires applicants to provide documents showing they have applied for legal immigrant status, but only “if a federal process exists” for students to do so.

“There is currently not a federal process in place, so this documentation is not currently required,” the website notes, a point the DOJ cited as support for its argument in the lawsuit.

Pottratz Acosta said some courts have historically sided with laws like Minnesota’s, pointing to a prior ruling by California’s Supreme Court upholding a similar law making undocumented students eligible for reduced tuition if they met certain requirements.

A spokesperson for Minnesota’s Attorney General pledged to “vigorously defend” the state’s laws in a prior statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune upon the lawsuit’s announcement. The Trump administration has already seen victory in the issue in Texas when the Justice Department sued the state over a similar tuition policy, and state officials agreed to end the decades-old law the same day. Another case brought by the DOJ last week in Kentucky remains pending.

Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, chief author of Minnesota’s Dream Act law, said the legislation received bipartisan support when it passed and faced no opposition in the years that followed

“This lawsuit is one more shameful part of the Trump Administration’s mission to demonize immigrant communities and force them out of public life,” Pappas said in a statement, referring to the case as “spiteful.”

The number of undocumented students in Minnesota’s higher education institutions is difficult to gauge because colleges do not keep a running list. The Minnesota Office of Higher Education previously told the Star Tribune that 506 people who filled out the Minnesota Dream Act application in 2024 received the Minnesota State Grant.

To Pottratz Acosta, an immigration lawyer for 20 years, the suit is also emblematic of Trump’s escalated strategy during his second term against undocumented communities and immigrant-friendly communities and states.

In late March, several international students enrolled in Minnesota’s university systems learned their visa or legal student statuses had been stripped without warning. At about the same time, federal agents detained three people with student visas in Minnesota and placed them in immigration custody. Many of the students responded with lawsuits, many of which have ended successfully and led to their release from detention.

“Minnesota, for better or worse, is kind of a target,” Pottratz Acosta said. “Both because we’re a blue state and because we have policies that are favorable to residents of the state who are not citizen residents of Minnesota.”