Ted Cruz questions Supreme Court ruling ordering free education for immigrant kids Dallas Morning News
march 9 2015
WASHINGTON – Sen. Ted Cruz said Monday that the Supreme Court probably made the wrong decision in 1982 when it ruled that public schools must provide free education to children who are in the country illegally.
“There’s a strong argument to say that it was [a mistake],” Cruz told a conservative radio host in Des Moines during a campaign visit to Iowa.
WHO host Jan Mickelson, an immigration hardliner, peppered Cruz with questions about
Plyler v. Doe,
a Texas case in which the justices ruled 5-4 that states must provide public education for students in the country illegally.
Mickelson argued that states should now defy the court and ignore the precedent, and prodded Cruz to embrace the idea.
The senator, a top student at Harvard Law School and former clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, stepped carefully. But he agreed that the court got it wrong.
That said, he added, the court probably had no constitutional basis for forcing states to educate children in the country illegally.