A federal judge on Friday dismissed a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit challenging Minnesota’s policy of extending in-state tuition and financial aid to certain undocumented students, allowing the state’s public universities to continue the program.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez ruled that the federal government failed to demonstrate that Minnesota’s tuition policy discriminates against U.S. citizens—the central argument the Trump administration had used to justify the suit. The DOJ had claimed the state’s policy “flagrantly” violated federal law by extending preferential benefits to immigrants living in the country without legal status.
The lawsuit, filed last summer, named Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and state Attorney General Keith Ellison as defendants alongside the state’s Office of Higher Education. It targeted a Minnesota law that grants in-state tuition rates and scholarship eligibility to students who attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years, regardless of immigration status. The administration contended the policy unfairly disadvantaged out-of-state American citizens, who are typically charged higher tuition rates at public universities.
Menendez rejected that framing outright. The judge said the DOJ had misread the underlying federal statute—a law passed under President Bill Clinton—because Minnesota’s policy applies uniformly to anyone meeting the three-year high school attendance requirement, irrespective of where they hold U.S. residency or what their immigration status is. She also found that neither Walz nor Ellison had the authority to alter the state statutes at issue, meaning the federal government lacked standing to name them as defendants.
Ellison, who helped lead the state’s defense, welcomed the outcome.
“Today, we defeated another one of Donald Trump’s efforts to misconstrue federal law to force Minnesota to abandon duly passed state laws and become a colder, less caring state,” he wrote in a statement Friday.
The ruling adds another chapter to an ongoing legal and political conflict between Minnesota and the Trump administration over immigration enforcement—one that has included large public protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and the deaths of two demonstrators.
The dismissal is a setback, but not necessarily a final one, for the administration’s broader effort to roll back in-state tuition policies nationwide. The DOJ has filed similar suits against Kentucky and Texas this month. In Texas, a federal judge last week actually blocked the state’s tuition break policy—though notably at the urging of the state’s own Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, who sided with the federal challenge. The administration also reached agreements with Texas and Oklahoma to end similar programs, though Judge Menendez said those outcomes held no precedent for the Minnesota case since they were not the product of contested litigation.
According to the National Immigration Law Center, at least 22 states and the District of Columbia have laws or policies granting in-state tuition to undocumented students, including both Democratic-leaning states like California and New York and Republican-leaning ones like Kansas and Nebraska. At least 14 of those states, including Minnesota, also offer financial aid and scholarships on top of reduced tuition rates.
