On Monday, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota for allowing undocumented residents to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges, further devolving the DOJ from an entity that protected civil rights to one that eradicates them.
The DOJ’s argument is that it’s unconstitutional to give undocumented residents in-state tuition because it discriminates against U.S. citizens. How? Because those who aren’t Minnesota residents do not receive in-state tuition rates.
This is a comically bad argument, as there is no way that non-Minnesota residents could ever receive in-state tuition. Giving the benefit to undocumented state residents does not deprive non-Minnesota residents of anything because they were never entitled to those benefits in the first place.
The lawsuit against Minnesota is basically the same as the DOJ’s lawsuit against Texas earlier this month. Texas had a similar law, which passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican. But once President Donald Trump issued some bigoted executive orders attacking immigrants, Texas immediately agreed to a consent judgment agreeing with the DOJ and declaring its own state law unconstitutional.
It’s pretty clear that the DOJ colluded with Texas to get just this result. It’s also clear that the goal of the sham lawsuit against the state was to set a precedent that the DOJ could use to sue other states.
If that sounds conspiratorial, read Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement about the lawsuit against Minnesota.
“This challenge builds upon a recently successful lawsuit against the state of Texas on a similar law,” she wrote.
It’s the exact same thing she said when announcing a lawsuit against Kentucky earlier this month over its in-state tuition law. Both announcements also promise that “no state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens.”
Under Bondi, the DOJ has been hollowed out, reduced to nothing but a blunt object to wield in enforcing Trump’s bigotry In April, the DOJ sued the state of Maine for allowing transgender students to participate in sports aligned with their gender identity, which is required by a Maine law that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and explicitly states that denying participation in sports constitutes discrimination.
But Maine’s law conflicts with Trump’s bigoted executive order that “protects” women’s sports by barring transgender women from participating, so the DOJ sued.
The DOJ has also attacked California on multiple fronts. On Wednesday, it announced the results of its sham investigation into the state allowing transgender athletes to compete, claiming that it violates Title IX. It orders California to bar transgender women from participating in women’s sports, or it will face some unnamed consequences. But we know that those consequences are always a threat to withhold federal funding.
The DOJ order also includes some absolutely unhinged demands for the California Department of Education, such as to “restore to female athletes all individual records, titles, and awards misappropriated by male athletes competing in female competitions.”
For any female athlete who is awarded this bigoted post facto recognition, the CDE must “send a personalized letter apologizing on behalf of the state of California for allowing her educational experience to be marred by sex discrimination.”
On Thursday, the DOJ announced another attack on California to investigate whether the University of California system discriminates by requiring “diverse” faculty members.
You can expect to see more lawsuits like this, particularly since the DOJ has also created a way for private parties to sue colleges under the False Claims Act for having diversity initiatives, which allows the private party to keep 30% of any money recovered by the government. The theory here is that federal money is being misspent on forbidden diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, which somehow deprives a random person of money.
These lawsuits are designed to force blue states to change their laws to reflect Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-trans beliefs. If states don’t, the Trump administration will keep hammering them with investigations and pulling funding.
It’s a complete repudiation of federalism—of states’ right to provide greater protections against discrimination than that of federal law.
Quite a move from the “party of states’ rights.”