Outlaw Governance

Gov. Greg Abbott says federal government should cover cost of educating undocumented students in Texas public schools https://t.co/gq9S25HHMI

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) May 6, 2022

 The long and short of it is: Texas is cheap.

Last month, a Texas Education Agency lawyer testified before the House Public Education Committee that federal guidance indicates that denying enrollment or attendance based on citizenship status would violate Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Texas does not track the citizenship status of students. Therefore, it is unclear how many undocumented students are enrolled or what the financial impact on Texas public schools is. Texas spends a minimum of $6,160 per student, which lags behind the national average of $12,600 in 2018.

Abbott's argument is that the Feds can't preach it round and square:

“The Supreme Court has ruled states have no authority themselves to stop illegal immigration into the states,” he said. “However, after the Plyler decision they say, ‘Nevertheless, states have to come out of pocket to pay for the federal government’s failure to secure the border.’ So one or both of those decisions will have to go.”

That's just political claptrap.  This is where he really wants to go:

Abbott pointed to the Plyler decision, as well as a 2012 Supreme Court decision that found that Arizona could not pass immigration laws that undermine federal immigration policy, striking down most of a state immigration law there.

The governor said those two decisions together violate the U.S. Constitution, which says the federal government can’t commandeer a state employee or a budget to enact federal policy.

There's your assault on Brown v. Board.  In fact, it's an assault on Gideon (look it up, I can't do everything for you!).  

Do I think it's a serious assault?  No. 

“[W]hile the Supreme Court split on the constitutionality of the Texas statute challenged in Plyler, all of the justices, including then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist, agreed that the Texas law seeking to exclude undocumented children from school was bad public policy,” said Thomas Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel. “All justices recognized the folly in excluding certain kids from school; ubiquitous truancy laws embody this well-supported notion. Abbott now seeks to inflict by intention the harms that nine justices agreed should be avoided 40 years ago.”

Meanwhile, the Gov. is afraid of a non-white, non-English speaking planet, because he's quite sure his supporters are, too:

“The only language barrier initially was Spanish. Now we have people coming from more than 105 different countries across the globe,” he said. “Who has that level of expertise where we can find the teachers who know all these multitude of different languages to where we would be able to educate kids and think how much that would cost?”

Top that, DeSantis! I double dog dare ya!