Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones filed a motion seeking to withdraw from an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice tied to litigation challenging Virginia’s policy on in-state tuition for certain immigrant students.
Jones’s filing comes days after he took office, reversing the position his predecessor, Attorney General Jason Miyares, took in a dispute over Virginia’s 2020 “Dream Act.” The DOJ challenged the Virginia law in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Dec. 29, and Miyares later joined the government in seeking a court declaration that the law was invalid and should not be enforced.
In a statement, Jones said he had promised Virginians he would fight back against the Trump administration’s “attacks” on the commonwealth, higher education institutions and, “most importantly – our students.” Jones also said Virginians “deserve leaders who will put them the first,” adding that his office would continue doing so.
The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment to ARLnow on Jones’s action, citing the pending litigation.
Virginia’s Dream Act of 2020 provides in-state tuition rates to higher education students who meet Virginia high school attendance requirements, regardless of immigration status. The DOJ alleges the policy discriminates against out-of-state U.S. citizens who cannot receive the same in-state tuition rates as undocumented immigrants living in Virginia.
In a news release announcing the litigation, Pam Bondi said the case involved “a simple matter of federal law” and stated that, “in Virginia and nationwide, schools cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens.” Bondi also said the Justice Department would not tolerate American students being “treated like second-class citizens in their own country.”
Several advocacy and legal groups moved to intervene in the lawsuit after a consent judgment, including the Legal Aid Justice Center, the ACLU of Virginia and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Rohmah Javed, director of the Legal Aid Justice Program at the Legal Aid Justice Center, said the students are people who grew up in Virginia, graduated from its high schools, and made “life-altering decisions” about their futures relying on a state law that has existed for years.
Javed added that the students are “Virginians in every way that matters” and said they deserve someone to “stand up and fight for them.” The DOJ has pursued similar in-state tuition lawsuits in Texas, Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma, Minnesota and California.