AMICUS BRIEF

LDAD Backs Constitutional Limits on Federal Power

June 28, 2021

Oct 10, 2025

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Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD) has filed an amicus brief in United States v. Texas warning that the federal government’s attempt to block Texas’s in-state tuition law crosses a constitutional line—using federal immigration authority to control state education law. The brief argues that this violates basic principles of federalism reflected in the Tenth Amendment because it seeks to conscript Texas into enforcing federal immigration policy.

LDAD’s brief focuses on the Tenth Amendment and the constitutional principle that the federal government cannot commandeer states to carry out federal policy. “Federal power is not unlimited,” said Georgetown Law Center Professor Mitt Regan, a principal author of the amicus brief. “While the Constitution permits the federal government to preempt state law concerning immigration, it does not authorize using federal immigration law to rewrite state education law.”

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