Plyler v. Doe
Encyclopedia : P : PL : PLY : Plyler v. Doe
| Plyler v. Doe | ||||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States | ||||||||
| Argued December 1, 1981 Decided June 15, 1982 | ||||||||
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| Holding | ||||||||
| A Texas statute denying free public education to illegal alien children violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, because denial on the basis of alienage did not further a substantial state interest. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. | ||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||
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| Case opinions | ||||||||
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| Laws applied | ||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Tex. Educ. Code Ann. § 21.031 |
Summary
Revisions to education laws in Texas in 1975 withheld state funds for educating children who had not been "legally admitted" to the United States and authorized local school districts to deny enrollment to such students. A 5-to-4 majority of the Supreme Court found that this policy was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, as undocumented children are people "in any ordinary sense of the term", and therefore had protection from discrimination unless a substantial state interest could be shown to justify it.
The court majority found that the Texas law was "directed against children, and impose[d] its discriminatory burden on the basis of a legal characteristic over which children can have little control" — namely, the fact of their having been brought illegally into the United States by their parents. The majority also observed that denying the children in question a proper education would likely contribute to "the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime." The majority refused to accept that any substantial state interest would be served by discrimination on this basis, and it struck down the Texas law.
The dissenting minority agreed in principle that it was unwise for illegal alien children to be denied a public education, but the four dissenting justices argued that the Texas law was not so objectionable as to be unconstitutional; that this issue ought to be dealt with through the legislative process; that "[t]he Constitution does not provide a cure for every social ill, nor does it vest judges with a mandate to try to remedy every social problem"; and that the majority was overstepping its bounds by seeking "to do Congress' job for it, compensating for congressional inaction".
This case was decided together with Texas v. Certain Named and Unnamed Alien Children.
Note that Plyler v. Doe did not address the question of so-called "anchor babies" born in the United States to undocumented immigrant parents; the children dealt with in the case were born outside the U.S. and had entered the country illegally along with their parents.
Sources
[Oyez Case Info]
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