Higher Education/Immigration/Residency Loose Ends, Tied up in a Bow
Michael A. Olivas (May 21, 2013)

I have been gathering up the recent flotsam and jetsam for the higher education residency and immigration cases decided in the last few months. (Inasmuch as I teach and follow both higher education law and immigration law, this is hog-heaven time for me as I pursue these truffles.) They show the remarkable reach of immigration and benefit law into college law, and while they are seemingly unconnected, there is the residency thread running through them all. Those involving US citizen children with undocumented parents being precluded from receiving residency tuition (in FL) and financial aid (in NJ) have been written about, sparingly, in the papers. The DACA-related challenges in Texas and Arizona have also received more attention, especially as they appear to cut in different ways, likely leading to a circuit split (although I would not give up entirely on the 5th Circuit, once they get and rule on Crane.) Strum v. SUNY is a sweet but unlikely case, brought by NJ domiciliaries who attended NYS boarding high schools, who then claimed NY resident tuition after they graduated from SUNY colleges. There is a tuition settlement program in play, for those were entitled to the NY resource: http://www.suny.edu/tuitionsettlement/ . Finally, there is HICA v. Alabama, which struck down the Alabama higher education statute aimed at the undocumented, when a refugee was also deemed to have been ineligible by the restrictionist language. (Ooops.)

I am stitching together these loose ends, if that is the right image, for a chapter in PERCHANCE TO DREAM, my forthcoming legal history of the DREAM Act and DACA (NYU Press). Because these have flown under a number of radars, I will post and attach them here. I also celebrate my new Johns Hopkins University Press book, which came out this week, and is in fine bookstores everywhere: Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts [http://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/ecom/MasterServlet/GetItemDetailsHandler?iN=9781421409238&qty=1&viewMode=1&loggedIN=false&JavaScript=y ]; it will also make fine Memorial Day reading.

[Final Judgment,] Ruiz v. Robinson, 892 F. Supp. 2d 1321 (S.D. Fla. 2012) (No. 11-23776) (FL resident tuition case concerning USC children and undocumented parents);

A.Z. v. Higher Educ. Student Assistance Auth., 48 A.3d 1151 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2012) (NJ financial aid case concerning USC children and undocumented parents)

[Proposed Class Action Settlement,] Strum v. State Univ. of N.Y., No. 0000064/2011 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. April 4, 2013), http://www.suny.edu/tuitionsettlement/ (NJ students residing in NY entitled to NYS residency rate refunds)

HICA v. Governor of Alabama, 691 F. 3d 1236 (11th Cir. 2012), cert den. Alabama v. U.S. 2013 WL 210698 (mem) (U.S. Apr. 29, 2013), Scalia diss. (Ala. Code Sec. 31-13-27)

ADAC et al. v. Brewer et al., CV12-02546 PHX DGC (DA is DACA, for Arizona purposes)

Crane v. Napolitano, No. 3:12-CV-03247-O, 2013 WL 1744422 (N.D. Tex. Apr. 23, 2013) (challenge to DACA)