LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of Arkansas on Thursday, asking a federal judge to strike down a 2019 law that allows some immigrants to pay in-state tuition at Arkansas public colleges and universities.
The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas and assigned to U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. and U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia S. Harris. The case number is 4:26-cv-928.
The lawsuit names the state, the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Arkansas Division of Higher Education, Division of Higher Education Commissioner Ken Warden and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva as defendants. Warden and Oliva are sued in their official capacities.
At issue is Act 844 of 2019, codified at Arkansas Code 6-60-215. The law lets state-supported colleges classify a student as in-state for tuition purposes if the student holds, or is the child of someone who holds, a federal Form I-766 work permit; is a legally present resident who immigrated from the Republic of the Marshall Islands; or has an approved and unexpired Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status.
Students must also have lived in Arkansas for at least three years when they apply and have graduated from an Arkansas high school or earned a high school equivalency diploma in the state.
The Justice Department argues the law conflicts with a 1996 federal statute, 8 U.S.C. 1623(a), that bars states from giving unlawfully present immigrants a postsecondary education benefit based on residency unless U.S. citizens from other states can get the same benefit. The complaint brings a single count under the Supremacy Clause and asks the court to declare the law unconstitutional and permanently block its enforcement.
The complaint contends a parent’s work permit does not confer legal status on an adult child and that DACA does not confer lawful immigration status. It calls the statute’s “nontraditional documented” label an “obscure characterization” that does not change the federal prohibition.
The government asks the court to enjoin the statute in its entirety, which would include the provision covering Marshall Islands immigrants the law describes as legally present. Arkansas is home to one of the largest Marshallese communities in the United States.
The complaint cites tuition gaps at three schools. It says the University of Arkansas charges Arkansas residents about $33,988 for an academic year compared with about $56,256 for nonresidents, that Arkansas State University charges about $5,425 per semester for residents and $9,760 for nonresidents, and that the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton charges $140 per credit hour for residents and $190 for nonresidents.
The filing singles out UACCM for a “DACA & Undocumented” page on its website and attaches the school’s in-state tuition request form as an exhibit. It also cites a University of Central Arkansas page explaining eligibility under Act 844. The complaint says the law covers all 11 four-year public universities and 23 two-year public colleges in the state.
The Justice Department also cites two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump in 2025. One directs federal agencies to ensure no taxpayer-funded benefits go to unqualified immigrants. The other directs officials to stop enforcement of state laws that provide in-state tuition to immigrants but not to out-of-state citizens.
“This is a simple matter of federal law: colleges cannot provide benefits to illegal aliens that they do not provide to U.S. citizens,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Civil Division said in a news release.
The Arkansas suit was one of four the department filed Thursday. It also sued Hawaii, Utah and the District of Columbia. The department said the filings bring its total to 25 lawsuits over in-state tuition and that it has now sued every state with such a law.
“We have now sued every state across our Nation that has a state law or regulation granting illegal aliens in-state tuition,” Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward Jr. said in the release.
The filings came one day after a federal judge in Kansas ruled that state’s in-state tuition law unconstitutional. The department said courts in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Illinois and Kansas have already entered orders blocking similar laws. Several of those cases ended in consent judgments in which the states agreed not to enforce the laws.
Arkansas appears headed the same direction. A spokesman for Attorney General Tim Griffin told Courthouse News Service the state agrees federal law preempts the statute and that it should not be enforced.
Senior Litigation Counsel Garrett Greene of the Civil Division’s Enforcement and Affirmative Litigation Branch signed the complaint.
The state had not filed a response as of Thursday evening.
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