Anti-Immigrant Legislation,Social Justice,and the Right to Equal Educational Opportunity

Abstract

In the debates over policies seeking to exclude illegal immigrant youth from public education, complex issues related to the human and legal rights of this group have often been reduced to cost-benefit analyses, to partisan polemics about multiculturalism and national identity, and to campaign posturing about tax burdens and crime. This article presents a contextual analysis of such policies and the related legal standards, with a focus on social justice and equality issues that are raised by the exclusion of any distinct group of children from educational opportunity. Our main thesis is that every individual's interest in meaningful public education is fundamental, in a constitutional sense, and that this interest does not depend on citizenship or economic status. We begin with an analysis of California's Proposition 187 and related Supreme Court decisions, most notably Plyler v. Doe (1982) and San Antonio v. Rodriguez (1973), and move to connections with school finance litigation. We continue with an appraisal of the potential of current federal and state case law to address issues of justice that legislation such as Proposition 187 might raise in the future. Finally, we present an argument for the strengthening of Fourteenth Amendment protections in the domain of education and give special attention to the formulations o f Justice Thurgood Marshall in several pertinent cases.