The ruling stops Illinois from ‘putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens,’ US Attorney Steven D Weinhoeft said.
A federal court ruled in favor of the Trump administration in a lawsuit challenging Illinois’ laws that offered education benefits to illegal immigrants while denying the same for out-of-state Americans.
In a July 24 order, the District Court for the Southern District of Illinois declared that in-state tuition provisions under the state’s Acevedo Bill (which became law in May 2023), its 2024 amendment, the DREAM Act, and the Retention of Illinois Students and Equity (RISE) Act, as applied to illegal immigrants, violated the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and are “unconstitutional and invalid.”
The Trump administration argued that these three laws, which provide postsecondary education benefits to illegal immigrants, were in violation of Title 8 of the U.S. Code Section 1623.
Section 1623 bans illegal immigrants from being eligible for post-secondary education benefits in a state unless the same benefits are provided to all U.S. citizens, regardless of their state of residence.
In its complaint filed last September, the Trump administration highlighted that the Acevedo Bill allows illegal immigrants to pay a lower tuition rate in the state’s public colleges and universities than a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident from other states.
The Illinois DREAM Act, signed into law in 2011, created a scholarship program funded by private donations. This benefit was later limited to illegal immigrants students in the state.
The RISE Act, which came into effect in 2020, extended state financial assistance to illegal immigrants.
In a motion to dismiss filed in November 2025, Illinois challenged the validity of Section 1623. The state argued that Section 1623 violates the anticommandeering doctrine outlined in the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which recognizes that Congress has no power to issue direct orders to a state.
Section 1623 “runs afoul of the anticommandeering doctrine because it regulates states rather than private actors,” Illinois said. Because Section 1623 violates the anticommandeering doctrine, “all the federal government’s claims against all defendants must be dismissed.”
However, in the July 24 order, the court disagreed with this argument, affirming that restrictions under Section 1623 do not constitute “commandeering” under the 10th Amendment.
The doctrine bans the federal government from dictating what state legislatures can or cannot do. It also prohibits Washington from compelling states to enact or enforce federal regulatory programs. Section 1623 “does none of these things,” the court observed.
Instead, Section 1623 “functions as a limit on the eligibility of noncitizens rather than a command that states legislate or administer any particular program.”
The court permanently enjoined Illinois and other defendants in the case, including state entities, from enforcing the three laws disputed by the Trump administration.
The case was brought by the Department of Justice’s Civil Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois, according to a July 24 statement from the department.
“Illinois sought to incentivize illegal immigration on the taxpayer’s dime by treating illegal aliens better than U.S. citizens living in other states, in clear violation of federal law,” U.S. Attorney Steven D Weinhoeft said in the statement.
“This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.”
