The ruling, by members of the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento, upholds the contention of out-of-state students and their parents that under federal law, the University of California, California State University and the California community colleges may not give illegal alien students benefits they don't grant citizens and legal residents from other states. They call it an "illegal alien tuition scheme." UC and its co-defendants maintain that California's tuition policy, enacted in 2001, doesn't discriminate. It simply sets the same in-state fees for all California residents who graduated from a California high school and attended one the prior three years, regardless of their immigration status.

"The three-year attendance requirement at a California high school," the court said, "is a surrogate residence requirement." The California law's requirement that the illegal alien student "will file an application (for legalization) as soon as he or she is eligible to do so," the judges said, is meaningless.

Court decisions