Georgia high court nixes immigrant students’ bid for lower tuition

The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously rejected Monday an appeal against a ruling by the state’s Board of Regents requiring undocumented students at public universities and colleges, including beneficiaries of the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, to pay outofstate tuition.

In its decision, the state’s Supreme Court said “the principle of sovereign immunity” shields from the defendants’ lawsuit the state government and all its departments and agencies, including the Board of Regents, which decided in 2011 not to permit undocumented students to pay the considerably lower amount of tuition granted to instate residents.

However, the decision leaves open the possibility that the plaintiffs, 39 DACA beneficiaries, could achieve their goal through another judicial procedure.

“Our decision today does not mean that citizens aggrieved by the unlawful conduct of public officers are without recourse,” the high court said in its decision, adding that undocumented students “must seek relief against such officers in their individual capacities,” not as a group.

As a result, one of the “dreamers’” attorneys said a lawsuit will be filed against each Board of Regents member individually.

In 2014, the 39 students sued the Board of Regents to demand that it acknowledge the “legal status” awarded by the DACA program as permission to study in state universities and pay instate tuitions.

Policy 4.1.6. passed by the Board of Regents in 2011 banned the enrollment of undocumented students in the five top state universities: the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia College and State University, the Medical College of Georgia and Georgia State University.

Of the 318,000 students enrolled in the state’s university system in 2011, only around 300 were undocumented and just 29 of them were admitted to the five universities covered by the contested policy.