NASHVILLE – State Sen. Todd Gardenhire says he hasn’t decided whether to renew his years-long legislative effort to provide in-state college tuition rates to undocumented Tennessee students brought illegally to the U.S. as children.
“It depends on several things,” the Chattanooga Republican said Tuesday, adding, “I haven’t tested the waters yet with everybody to see what their feelings are on that.”
The bill’s latest version failed in a House panel last spring. It sought to put decisions over granting in-state tuition rates to the undocumented students in the hands of public colleges and universities, not the Tennessee General Assembly.
And earlier this month, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery dealt the bill another blow, saying in a legal opinion that state lawmakers can’t delegate the decision to higher education officials under a 1996 federal law and subsequent court rulings in other states.
Slatery wrote that the law and court rulings collectively “require the state legislature to enact legislation expressly making unlawful aliens eligible for public benefits, including in-state tuition.”