White House rips Greg Abbott’s push to revive legal fight over undocumented students
White House press secretary Jen Psaki ripped Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday for suggesting that that the state will seek to relitigate the 1982 Supreme Court decision that found Texas and other states were required to provide free education to all children, including undocumented immigrants.
“Well, that’s ultra-MAGA right there,” Psaki said, referencing the abbreviation for former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
“We’re talking about, just to restate that, denying public education to kids, including immigrants to this country. I mean, that is not a mainstream point of view,” said Psaki, who will conclude her tenure as President Joe Biden’s press secretary next week.
Texas enacted a law in 1975 that restricted the use of state funds to educate children who had not been admitted legally to the U.S. The policy was struck down seven years later by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Plyler v. Doe decision.
Abbott said in a radio interview Wednesday that the state could seek to revive the policy 40 years after it was struck down by the nation’s high court. On Thursday night, Abbott said the federal government should cover the cost of educating undocumented children in public schools or let states decide their own immigration policies, according to the Texas Tribune.
“I think we will resurrect that case and challenge this issue again, because the expenses are extraordinary and the times are different than when Plyler versus Doe was issued many decades ago,” Abbott told nationally syndicated radio host Joe Pagliarulo.
He reiterated his stance Thursday during a small business roundtable in Houston.
“Plyler is a 40-year-old decision that dealt with immigration in the state of Texas that was extremely different then than it is now,” Abbott said.
The Texas governor’s push to relitigate the case comes after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide. The pending decision could be officially issued in weeks.
Abbott, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024, has repeatedly clashed with the Biden administration on a host of issues.
Psaki called Abbott’s stance “way out of the mainstream,” but she said that the draft decision has “raised the alarms” for Biden that other rights established by decisions could be under threat following the draft decision on abortion.
“This is what’s on the mind of the president,” Psaki said, pointing specifically to the right to contraception and marriage equality.
During a campaign event in Austin, Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat running for Texas governor, criticized Abbott’s effort to revive the decades-old legal dispute on Texas education.
“I want everybody to pay specific attention to the phrasing of this. Governor Abbott is against providing public education to all the children of the state of Texas. Now he’s saying out loud what we know he’s been working on ever since he became governor. He’s trying to defund our public schools,” O’Rourke said.
The Star-Telegram’s Eleanor Dearman contributed to this report.
This story was originally published May 5, 2022 at 7:48 PM.
