House and Senate negotiators have agreed to revive a proposal eliminating in-state tuition at higher education institutions for students who don’t live in the country legally.
The House agreed to Senate demands last week to put the in-state tuition measure back in a larger bill that bans immigrants living in the United States illegally from receiving most state or local benefits.
The Senate passed a version of the bill that banned in-state tuition for those young immigrants, but the House passed a version restoring the program.
But Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach issued an opinion warning lawmakers that the program was illegal and that President Donald Trump’s administration could go to court to bring the program to an end like it has in other states.
“We’ve had a lot of people look at it, and we really feel it’s not going to be defendable,” said Republican state Rep. Tom Kessler of Wichita, chair of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee and a member of the conference committee.
“The feds are going to come after us on it. They’re going to sue us on it,” Kessler said.
“We’ve had quite a few people look it over to see if there was a precedent somewhere that we can kind of make this stick,” he said.
“It’s really important to my members. It was really important to the House to keep that going the way it is,” he said.
The overall immigration bill got 86 votes in the House, and it remains to been seen how many votes it might get if in-state tuition is eliminated.
The bill passed with 30 votes in the Senate.
Kobach issued an opinion Feb. 10 declaring that the state’s program providing tuition for immigrant students who live in the state illegally violates federal law.
“For more than 20 years, Kansas has been violating federal law with impunity,” Kobach said in a statement.
“Now, the Trump Department of Justice is cracking down on states that have been violating that specific law banning in-state tuition for illegal aliens.
Kobach, a longtime opponent of the program, said states have already been sued, and the federal government has already prevailed in two of them.
“Kansas legislators would do well to bring Kansas into compliance with the law rather than being sued by the federal government,” Kobach said.
Last year, Kobach said the U.S. Justice Department filed lawsuits against seven states —Texas, Kentucky, Illinois, Oklahoma, Minnesota, California and Virginia — with in-state tuition policies similar to Kansas’.
The lawsuits followed Trump’s executive order vowing to confront state and local officials who he says use their “authority to violate, obstruct, and defy the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
The order directs federal authorities to compile lists of “sanctuary jurisdictions” and that federal funds could be cut off if they don’t adhere to federal immigration law.
The order also requires federal officials to take “appropriate action” to stop the enforcement of state and local laws as well as practices that favor “aliens over any groups of American citizens.”
“No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said when the Kentucky lawsuit was filed.
A federal judge halted the 2001 Texas law signed by former Republican Gov. Rick Perry that gave college students without legal residency access to in-state tuition.
On that same day, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a joint motion along with the Trump administration to end the law for in-state tuition for immigrants not living in the country legally.
Texas was the first state to permit in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students.
Last August, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a joint motion with the U.S. Department of Justice to end a state law giving in-state tuition to immigrants who live in the country illegally.
A federal judge ultimately found that students who were not in the United States legally were not eligible to receive in-state tuition at any state post-secondary educational institution in Oklahoma.
The Kansas in-state tuition program is open to someone who attended an accredited Kansas high school for three years or more, graduated from an accredited Kansas high school or earned a general equivalency diploma and sought to legalize their immigration status
There were 310 students – 0.2% of the total student population – enrolled in state universities, community colleges and technical colleges who received in-state tuition in the program as of the fall of 2024, according to the most recent state data available.
The Board of Regent said there was no more recent information because the agency no longer collects that data.
Most of the students -180 – were enrolled in community colleges. Another 106 were enrolled at public universities, and 24 attended technical schools.
In 2024, 102 were enrolled at Johnson County Community College, 46 attended Wichita State University, 26 attended Kansas City, Kansas Community College, 24 attended the WSU Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology, 21 attended Butler Community College and 17 attended Fort Hays State.
