An attorney for a group of immigrant students is appealing a court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit seeking in-state college tuition for students who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children.
Immigration attorney Charles Kuck filed the appeal to the state appellate court Friday on behalf of more than three dozen students who sued the University System of Georgia for denying them the lower-cost in-state tuition at state colleges and universities.
Last month a Fulton County Superior Court judge threw out the students’ lawsuit, saying Georgia law bars such suits through sovereign immunity.
The students have argued that they should be allowed to pay in-state tuition because a federal program has granted them a temporary reprieve from deportation. The federal government says people granted that benefit are legally present in the U.S., which is what Georgia’s in-state tuition policy requires.
But state attorneys have maintained that the government’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program does not affect Georgia’s tuition policies.
The University System also prevents students in the deferred action program from attending any institution that has not enrolled all its academically qualified applicants for the previous two years. Those schools currently include the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State, Georgia Regents and Georgia College and State universities.
Twenty states have laws or policies allowing people who meet certain criteria to pay in-state tuition rates, regardless of their legal status, according to the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights organization.
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