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Will Congress Help States Challenge SCOTUS Ruling That Gives Illegal Immigrants Massive Benefits?

Thomas Massie and Chip Roy. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Pedro Boccalato Rodriguez-Aparicio is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal. Send an email to Pedro.

A House subcommittee is exploring ways to challenge a 1982 Supreme Court ruling that radically expanded illegal alien’s access to state benefits.

In Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that barred illegal immigrant children from enrolling in public schools and argued these illegal immigrants were entitled to that benefit, and many others, under the 14th Amendment.

So much for ‘ourselves and our posterity,’ suggests Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government.

“This is unicorn nonsense,” Roy said. “These enrollments have cost Texans 1.9 billion dollars, and the United States 78 billion dollars in total.”

Roy held a subcommittee hearing on Wednesday morning titled “Immigration Policy by Court Order: The Adverse Effects of Plyler v. Doe.” The subcommittee focused on the taxpayer cost of illegal alien students enrolled in education, stating that “states should have the ability to curb” the Supreme Court decision.

“Immigration, legal or illegal, is not a fundamental right,” Roy said. “Accessing public education is not a fundamental right.”

“Plyer on a constitutional basis is wrong,” he added.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., claimed that these kinds of schemes has drowned the American taxpayer in debt. “The national debt has exceeded 39 trillion dollars!” he exclaimed.

Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., also noted the fiscal burden: “California alone spends $3 billion a year” on illegal students.

Subcommittee Democrats, meanwhile, claimed that the desire to overturn Plyler v Doe is a “bigoted” attempt to “kick off children from schools.”

“Texas looks to enshrine bigotry and bad ideas into law,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Penn., the subcommittee’s ranking member, said, amounting to “a cruel attempt to punish undocumented children for the decision their parents made, which they had no choice in.”

“The effort is part of an ill-conceived effort to stop immigration, and an effort to kick kids out of schools,” Scanlon added.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., claimed that “excluding undocumented children from education will cause a lifetime of hardship to a child who had no control over the decision to be in the United States.”

“Kids who have been able to go to school thanks to Plyer have contributed to the country,” Raskin added. “Plyler has strengthened the workforce.”

Hearing witness Matt O’Brien, the deputy executive director of the Federation for Immigration Reform, testified that Plyler v. Doe was wrongly decided.

“The court struck it down, and not on legal grounds,” O’Brien claimed. “Plyler exemplifies judicial lawmaking.”

Over time, the fiscal impact has taken a massive toll on state and local governments. “Today’s states and local governments spend tens of millions to comply with Plyler, even when many public schools struggle with overcrowding and limited resources,” O’Brien said.

As a result, “state budgets spend more money on public education than anything else.”

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