The fundamental expectation of a state’s chief legal officer is to serve as its staunchest defender, a principle that was dramatically upended in Virginia when its own Attorney General joined federal forces to dismantle a law he was sworn to uphold. This unprecedented move plunged the Commonwealth into a fierce legal and political battle over a 2020 statute granting in-state tuition to certain long-term undocumented residents. In his final days in office, Attorney General Jason Miyares partnered with the U.S. Department of Justice to challenge the law, a last-minute maneuver that ignited a firestorm of controversy and positioned Virginia as a key front in a national conflict over immigration, education, and the very duties of a state’s top attorney.
The Unprecedented Alliance When a State’s Top Lawyer Fights His Own Law
What happens when the official charged with defending a state’s laws instead joins the federal government to have one declared illegal? This question became the heart of a contentious legal drama in Virginia. In a highly unorthodox move, outgoing Attorney General Jason Miyares filed a joint motion with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), effectively supporting a federal lawsuit aimed at striking down a Virginia tuition policy. This action represented a profound break from tradition, where an attorney general typically defends state statutes against external challenges, regardless of personal political alignment.
The timing of the legal strike raised immediate alarms among civil rights advocates and incoming state officials. The DOJ’s lawsuit was filed on December 29th, and Miyares’s supporting motion followed a day later, all unfolding over a holiday weekend just before a new administration was set to take power. Critics swiftly condemned the action as a calculated political gambit designed to secure a favorable ruling from a federal judge before the incoming attorney general, who had pledged to defend the law, could be sworn in. This maneuver ensured the state itself would offer no initial defense, leaving proponents of the law scrambling to intervene.
Understanding the Law on the Line Who Benefits and Why It Matters
At the center of this storm was a law passed in 2020 under former Governor Ralph Northam, created to provide a pathway to affordable higher education for a specific group of Virginia residents. The statute was not an open invitation but a carefully structured policy aimed at individuals with deep and demonstrable ties to the Commonwealth. It allowed students who met strict criteria to qualify for the same in-state tuition rates as their citizen peers, acknowledging their long-term residency and contributions to the state’s economy.
Eligibility was far from automatic. To qualify, a student had to prove they had attended a Virginia high school for at least two years and either graduated or earned a GED within the state. Furthermore, applicants were required to furnish evidence that they, their parents, or their legal guardians had dutifully filed and paid Virginia state income taxes for a minimum of two consecutive years. These requirements were designed to ensure that the beneficiaries were not transient but were invested members of their local communities who had already contributed to the state’s public services, including the very university system they sought to access affordably.
The human impact of this legal challenge was significant and immediate. According to data from the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, Virginia is home to approximately 13,000 undocumented students enrolled in its colleges and universities. For this population, the 2020 law represented the difference between a viable path to a degree and an insurmountable financial wall. The lawsuit threatened to abruptly close this door, casting uncertainty over the academic futures of thousands of young people who had grown up and been educated in Virginia.
The Political Firestorm and the Financial Stakes
The legal battle was not merely about ideology but also about tangible financial barriers. The 2020 law directly addressed the staggering cost of higher education, which is particularly pronounced in Virginia. During the 2022-23 academic year, the average cost for in-state tuition and fees at Virginia’s public universities was $14,825, already well above the national average of $9,750. The law made this attainable for qualifying students, but its repeal would force them to pay out-of-state rates, which are often prohibitively expensive.
A look at the state’s flagship institutions highlights the financial chasm the law was designed to bridge. At the University of Virginia, an in-state undergraduate in the College of Arts and Sciences for the 2025-26 academic year was charged $16,258. In stark contrast, their out-of-state counterpart paid $55,436—more than three times as much. This disparity makes an education at one of the nation’s premier public universities an impossible dream for most without access to in-state rates.
The situation was similar at Virginia Tech, another of the state’s leading universities. There, in-state undergraduates paid $13,548, while out-of-state students faced a bill of $35,408. These figures underscore the practical importance of the 2020 law. By revoking access to in-state tuition, the lawsuit threatened to effectively banish thousands of long-term Virginia residents from the state’s top public institutions, pushing the dream of higher education far out of reach.
Voices from the Legal Trenches a Clash of Ideologies
The legal arguments presented by both sides revealed a deep and irreconcilable ideological divide. The DOJ, led at the time by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, argued that the Virginia law provided an illegal public benefit to non-citizens that was unavailable to U.S. citizens from other states. Attorney General Miyares echoed this position in a public statement, characterizing the policy as a “reward” that “only further incentivizes illegal immigration.” Their stance framed the issue as a matter of federal immigration law and equal treatment for all American citizens, regardless of their state of residence.
In response, a coalition of civil rights groups and Democratic officials mounted a swift and forceful defense. The ACLU of Virginia and the Legal Aid Justice Center filed an emergency motion to intervene on behalf of a nonprofit supporting undocumented students. They accused Miyares of having “abandoned his duties to defend Virginia law,” arguing the secretive holiday filing was an attempt to “manufacture a predetermined outcome.” Their intervention aimed to ensure the students affected would have a voice in a courtroom where their own state’s attorney had sided against them.
The political condemnation was just as sharp. Incoming Attorney General Jay Jones, a Democrat, slammed the lawsuit as a “deliberate attempt to beat the clock” and prevent his administration from defending the statute. He labeled the joint action a form of “federal overreach Virginians rejected in November,” signaling his intent to use every legal tool at his disposal to protect the law once he took office. This clash transformed the courthouse into an arena for a broader political war over state versus federal power and the rights of immigrants.
A National Strategy in Focus The Virginia Case as Part of a Broader Campaign
The legal assault on Virginia’s tuition law was not an isolated event but a single battle in a larger, coordinated national campaign. Under the Trump administration, the DOJ had systematically targeted states with similar statutes, making Virginia the seventh state to face a federal lawsuit over its in-state tuition policies for undocumented residents. This broader context revealed that the fight in Virginia was part of a concerted effort to dismantle such laws across the country, using the full weight of the federal government.
A clear precedent for this strategy had already been set in Texas. There, Attorney General Ken Paxton worked in concert with the Trump administration to successfully challenge his state’s long-standing tuition law, establishing a playbook for how a state’s own top lawyer could collaborate with federal authorities to overturn local legislation. Miyares’s actions in Virginia followed this model, demonstrating a growing trend of partisan alignment between certain state attorneys general and the federal executive branch on contentious issues like immigration.
This pattern exposed a deep partisan divide in how states responded to federal pressure. While Democratically-controlled states like California vowed to vigorously defend their tuition laws in court, Republican officials in states like Texas and Virginia chose to cooperate with the DOJ’s challenges. The Virginia case thus became a powerful illustration of how state-level education policy had become deeply enmeshed in the nation’s polarized political landscape, with the fate of thousands of students hanging on the outcome of these high-stakes legal and ideological confrontations.
The legal challenge initiated by the DOJ and then-Attorney General Miyares ultimately marked a contentious chapter in the state’s political history. It brought to the forefront the profound ideological rifts over immigration and education while testing the traditional boundaries of a state attorney general’s duties. The case left a lasting legacy, not just for the thousands of students whose futures hung in the balance, but for the principle of state sovereignty in the face of coordinated federal pressure. The battle fought in Virginia’s courts served as a stark reminder of how quickly established state policies could become vulnerable when state and federal political agendas aligned, a lesson that continued to resonate in legislative debates for years afterward.
