Plyler v. Doe (1982)

Background

In September 1977 the Board of Trustees of Tyler Independent School District refused to enroll unauthorized migrant children who did not pay a tuition fee of $1,000 per year. The Board of Trustees was authorized to take this action pursuant to §21.031 of the Texas Education Code, which authorized local school districts to deny enrollment to children not legally admitted to the United States or to charge such children tuition.

The parents of a group of Mexican children residing in Smith County, Texas, who could not establish that they had been lawfully admitted to the United States, challenged the Texas statute as unconstitutional. The plaintiffs argued that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and that the statute was preempted by the federal Immigration and Naturalization Act. After success at the trial level, additional suits were filed on behalf of undocumented students regarding the practices of local school districts in other parts of Texas. The [Page 1669]Supreme Court consolidated all of these cases and issued its decision in Plyler v. Doe on June 15, 1982.

The Court's Decision

The Supreme Court decided this case based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. This provision provides that “[n]o State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” There were two key issues that the Court had to decide:

• 1.
  Are unauthorized migrants persons within the jurisdiction of Texas?
• 2.
  Was Texas's denial of a free public K–12 education to unauthorized migrant school-aged children consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

The Court summarily rejected Texas's argument that migrants were not persons within the jurisdiction of Texas. Relying on precedent, the Court stated that noncitizens, even those whose presence is unlawful, have been recognized as persons entitled to due process of law pursuant to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court could find no reason to read the Equal Protection Clause more restrictively than the Due Process Clause. Furthermore, as Justice William Brennan put it in the majority opinion, allowing such an interpretation would undermine the main purpose of the Equal Protection Clause—to abolish “all caste-based and invidious class-based legislation.” The Court concluded that all individuals present within the territorial boundaries of a state are entitled to equal protection of the laws.

The Court was next faced with determining whether the Texas law violated the Equal Protection Clause by allowing school districts to charge unauthorized migrant schoolchildren tuition while providing the same service for free to U.S. citizens and legally admitted noncitizens. In making this determination, the Court did not use the most rigorous standard of review—strict scrutiny. Strict scrutiny is reserved for those cases that involve a suspect class or a fundamental right. Race is the prototypical suspect class, and freedom of expression is an example of a fundamental right. The Court concluded that unauthorized migrants were not a suspect class because their immigration status is constitutionally relevant. The right at issue, a free public school education, was not considered a fundamental right. In 1973, the Court held that education is not a fundamental right in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriquez. Yet the Court's opinion emphasizes the importance of education, noting that “education has a fundamental role in maintaining the fabric of our society.” In light of the critical role that education plays in the United States, the Court examined the Texas law to determine whether the immigration status classifications used were rational. In conducting the rationality analysis, the Court noted that the classifications could not be rational “unless it furthers some substantial goal of the State.” The Court evaluated three interests that the state might have in charging for the education of undocumented students: to preserve its limited resources for the education of lawful residents; to avoid special burdens that undocumented students might place on the state; and to avoid using its resources to educate unauthorized migrant schoolchildren who were less likely than other children to remain within Texas and put their education to use there. The Court found none of these state interests to be substantial. The Court concluded, “If the State is to deny a discrete group of innocent children the free public education that it offers to other children residing within its borders, that denial must be justified by showing that it furthers some substantial state interest. No such showing was made here.”

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