Tennessee GOP bills target public school education for immigrant children without legal status

This story has been updated.

Tennessee Republican leaders have set their sights on overturning 40 years of U.S. Supreme Court precedent with proposed legislation intended to deny immigrant children without legal permanent status equal access to a public education.

On Tuesday, Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth and state Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican, unveiled a bill that would allow school districts and charter schools to “opt out” of enrolling students who lack permanent legal status. 

A separate bill from Rep. Gino Bulso of Brentwood and Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, both Republicans, would require parents of kids without legal status to pay public school tuition and fees — raising the prospect of first-time immigration verification checks in Tennessee public schools to determine who must pay. 

And Gov. Bill Lee’s universal school voucher legislation that offers Tennessee families private school vouchers paid for with taxpayer dollars specifically excludes kids who lack legal immigration status. 

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The proposals drew criticism from Democratic lawmakers and advocates who say denying kids an education is a cruel and shortsighted calculation that fails to consider the economic and community contributions of Tennessee’s immigrants. 

An estimated 10,000 children and 120,000 adults without legal immigration status live, work and attend school in Tennessee, according to an analysis of federal data by the Migration Policy Institute.

“Tennessee families come in all shapes and sizes, and I find it very cruel to punish kids — we’re talking about kids in K-12 — who through no fault of their own, are caught in the middle of this big debate that’s happening,” said Rep. Gabby Salinas, a Memphis Democrat who immigrated to Tennessee as a child.

“There’s a human cost to these bills,” she said. “They aren’t just numbers. They’re in the end going to be harming kids.”

The policy proposals are directly at odds with the landmark 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, which concluded that excluding kids from public schools due to their immigration status was unconstitutional, violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Republican backers of the measures say that’s the point.

“Our education system has limited resources, which should be prioritized for students who are legally present in the country,” Watson said in a news release announcing the bill to allow school districts the option of excluding children as a “challenge to Plyler v. Doe.”

Tennessee Republicans last week approved legislation to create a state immigration enforcement office to liaise with the Trump administration, create distinct driver’s licenses for noncitizens and levy felony charges at local elected officials who vote in favor of sanctuary policies.

Lamberth said migrants living in the country without legal permission “put an enormous drain on American tax dollars and resources. Our schools are the first to feel the impact.” 

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National immigration experts said Tennessee’s proposals reflect the broader push from some conservative groups to overturn the court’s ruling. 

That longtime effort was given new life last year by the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, and buoyed by the election of President Donald Trump, who has pledged mass deportations. Since his inauguration, Trump has also lifted longstanding protections of “sensitive” areas, such as schools, from immigration enforcement actions.

The Heritage Foundation in 2024 urged states to pass legislation to collect immigration status data on public schoolchildren and charge tuition for kids without legal immigration status. 

“Ever since the Supreme Court decided Plyler in 1982, there have been repeated attempts to reverse the decision or invalidate its key holdings,” said Will Dempster, a spokesperson for the National Immigration Law Center. 

“The most recent impetus is recognition of right-wing forces that there’s maybe an opportunity to try again, especially as state legislatures have become ever more virulently anti-immigrant,” he said. “Heritage (Foundation) is really a bellwether and guide for states, and last year they unfurled a formal playbook. We’ve seen states across the country try to take this up.”

Dempster noted that efforts are underway in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana and Indiana to enact policies at the state and school board levels to identify or exclude children based on their legal status.

Tennessee’s proposed legislation to demand tuition payments or allow local districts to exclude certain children based on immigration status clearly run afoul of the Plyler ruling, Dempsey said.

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The U.S. Supreme Court concluded that denying certain children an education would create a permanent underclass at odds with the nation’s founding principles. 

The exclusion of some immigrant children from public schools “presents most difficult problems for a nation that prides itself on adherence to principles of equality under law,” the ruling said. 

Lee’s universal school voucher proposal, which excludes immigrant families without legal status, presents a legal “gray area” that could challenge the Plyler ruling, said Zachary Norris, senior attorney at the Niskanen Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

“The voucher plan poses some interesting legal questions,” he said. “There’s a difference between the proposed bills (to charge tuition or exclude students), which I see as a direct challenge to Plyler. Vouchers are kind of nibbling around the edges of Plyler.”

States aren’t obligated to provide so-called “ancillary” education services that go beyond core educational responsibilities. Defenders of the governor’s voucher bill  could argue it is an ancillary to core public school services, but the measure could also serve to create a “two-tiered system — the very outcome Plyler sought to prevent,” an analysis by the Niskanen Center said.

“Because selective voucher singles out undocumented students specifically, it’s kind of in a gray area legally,” he said. 

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, which advocates on behalf of immigrants statewide, pledged to fight for equal access to a public education and called measures to exclude children based on their immigration status as an “extreme partisan attack.”

“Tennesseans from Memphis to Mountain City rely on our public schools to provide the strong foundation our children need to grown and thrive. We send them off to school each day knowing that their right to an education, their freedom to learn, is protected and secured because the Supreme Court has long made it clear that public education belongs to all of us, no matter the color of our skin, the ZIP code we were born in, or our immigration status,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, the coalition’s executive director.

“But now, certain politicians are trying to take that freedom from our students based on who they are and how they came to call Tennessee home,” she said.  “Imagine a parent having to tell their child they can no longer go to school. Imagine your child asking why their teammate is not playing with them anymore. That’s not the Tennessee we believe in. Together with our members and educators across the state, we will fight for our children’s freedom to learn and for our vision of a Tennessee where everyone can belong.”