Equal Access Education v. Merten case brief

Equal Access Education v. Merten case brief summary
305 F.Supp.2d 585 (2004)

CASE SYNOPSIS

Three remaining plaintiffs, an association and two aliens, sued defendants, officials and boards of visitors of a number of Virginia's post-secondary educational institutions, claiming that the institutions violated the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy, Commerce, and Due Process clauses. Defendants moved to dismiss.

CASE FACTS
Plaintiffs claimed that defendants violated the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy, Commerce, and Due Process clauses by denying admission to illegal aliens or to persons they believed to have an "illegal," "unlawful," or "undocumented" immigration status.


DISCUSSION

• The court determined that the Supremacy Clause did not bar defendants from adopting and enforcing admissions policies that denied admission to illegal aliens, provided that defendants used federal immigration status standards to identify which applicants were illegal aliens. 
• Resolution of whether defendants used standards different from federal standards to classify aliens as legal or illegal had to await a more fully developed factual record. 
• Regarding the foreign commerce clauseclaim, the court found that the link between defendants' admissions policies and any effect on foreign commerce was simply too tenuous and certainly did not outweigh the local benefit of conserving state educational resources for United States citizens and foreign nationals legally present in the U.S. 
• Finally, the court did not find that plaintiffs had a property interest protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

CONCLUSION

Defendants' motion to dismiss based on lack of standing was denied. Defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint's claim of a Supremacy Clause violation was granted in part and denied in pArticle Defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint's foreign commerce clause and due process claims was granted.

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