Abbott Considers Challenging Right to Education for Children of Unauthorized Migrants

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday that he might seek to overturn a 1982 Supreme Court decision establishing that children of unauthorized immigrants had a right to the same public education as U.S. citizens. 

The decision, Plyler v. Doe, held that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause included “anyone, citizen or stranger.” Abbott’s remarks came amid a surge of migrant apprehensions at the border; less than a week earlier, a leaked draft opinion showed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority was willing to overturn Roe v. Wade, another decades-old decision. 

Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is also seeking reelection in 2022, have led a series of forays into national partisan politics in recent months. These included classifying transgender healthcare treatments as child abuse, busing migrants to Washington, D.C., and implementing commercial border inspections that led to hours-long delays for truckers. 

Coverage was more common in left-rated national outlets and local Texas outlets. While coverage across the spectrum noted a connection between Abbott’s remarks and the leaked Supreme Court opinion on Roe, coverage from the left often framed conservatives as seeing “an opening for a fresh look at old precedents.”