A federal judge permanently blocked Illinois from offering in-state tuition, financial aid, and scholarships to illegal immigrants, ruling the state's laws unconstitutional and handing the Trump administration another win in its nationwide legal campaign against such policies.
U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, a Trump appointee in the Southern District of Illinois, sided with the Justice Department on Friday and declared the state's in-state tuition policies, the RISE Act, and the Illinois DREAM Act "unconstitutional and invalid" as they apply to illegal immigrants. McGlynn granted the federal government's motion for summary judgment and denied Illinois' motion to dismiss, Fox News Digital reported.
The ruling permanently bars Illinois from enforcing those laws, though McGlynn delayed the order for 14 days to give the state a window to seek intervention from an appeals court. Gov. JB Pritzker's office has not publicly responded. Fox News Digital reached out to Pritzker for comment but received no reply.
The Justice Department filed the lawsuit against Illinois and a handful of colleges in September 2025. The core argument was straightforward: federal law prohibits a state from granting postsecondary education benefits to illegal immigrants based on state residency unless it extends the same benefits to every U.S. citizen, regardless of where they live. Illinois did not do that.
The Washington Examiner reported that the DOJ framed the case around that federal statute, stating: "Under [federal law], a state may not grant postsecondary education benefits to illegal aliens on the basis of residence in that state unless it makes the same benefit available to every United States citizen and national, without regard to where they live."
In plain terms, an illegal immigrant living in Illinois could receive in-state tuition rates and state-funded scholarships, while an American citizen living across the border in Indiana or Missouri could not. That is the disparity the court found unconstitutional.
U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft celebrated the decision in a statement:
"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. This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens."
Rep. Mary Miller, a Republican representing Illinois, praised the ruling on X, calling it "a win for Illinois taxpayers and American students who were shut out while Pritzker prioritized foreigners in our country illegally."
The McGlynn ruling is not an isolated event. It is part of a broader Justice Department litigation campaign targeting state-level education benefit laws across the country. The administration has already won or reached settlements in similar cases involving Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Nebraska, specifically, agreed to end in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants as part of a DOJ settlement.
Lawsuits remain pending against nine additional states: California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Kansas, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Virginia. The administration has made clear it intends to pursue every one of them. That legal pressure has already reshaped the landscape in recent federal court rulings on immigration, where judges have increasingly sided with enforcement-first arguments.
Just one day before the Illinois ruling, the DOJ filed a new lawsuit against Colorado, challenging that state's ASSET Act and related policies. The federal government argued Colorado unlawfully provides lower tuition rates and state financial aid to illegal immigrants while denying those same benefits to out-of-state U.S. citizens. More than 6,000 illegal immigrants receive in-state tuition in Colorado, the New York Post reported.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward issued a blunt statement about the Colorado case:
"For three decades, Congress has made clear that Colorado cannot give education benefits to illegal aliens that it does not give to all American citizens. By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, Colorado is not only violating federal law but subsidizing education for illegal aliens at taxpayers' expense. Our litigation efforts will not cease until we have fulfilled President Trump's promise that illegal aliens will not obtain preferential treatment over our nation's own citizens."
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis pushed back. A spokesperson for Polis previously told Fox News Digital that "the federal government seizing control of determining in-state tuition across the country is absurd," adding that Colorado is "expanding access to education to provide students with the skills to get good-paying jobs and doubling down on strategies to save students money."
That defense may resonate in progressive circles, but it sidesteps the central legal question. The federal statute does not prevent states from setting their own tuition rates. It prevents states from giving illegal immigrants a residency-based benefit that American citizens from other states cannot access. The distinction matters, and so far, courts have not been sympathetic to the states' framing.
Not every administration legal effort on immigration has gone smoothly, of course. A separate federal ruling in Minnesota went the other way, reminding observers that the judicial landscape is uneven. But on the specific question of tuition benefits for illegal immigrants, the DOJ's record is building fast, four states down, nine more in the pipeline.
Illinois now has 14 days to decide whether to fight the ruling on appeal. Pritzker has said nothing publicly. His office did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
The political math is not complicated. Under the RISE Act and the Illinois DREAM Act, the state directed taxpayer money toward tuition subsidies, financial aid, and scholarships for people who are in the country illegally, benefits that American citizens living one state over could not receive. A federal judge looked at that arrangement and called it what it was: unconstitutional.
Congressional Republicans have been pushing to codify similar restrictions at the federal level. The recent legislative maneuvering around the SAVE America Act reflects the same underlying principle, that taxpayer-funded benefits should go to citizens and lawful residents, not to people who broke the law to get here.
When a state spends its residents' tax dollars subsidizing tuition for people who entered the country illegally, while charging full freight to Americans from neighboring states, it should not take a federal lawsuit to see the problem. But apparently, in Illinois, it did.