The Latino civil rights organization that helped secure the historic 1982 Supreme Court victory guaranteeing a public school education for all children regardless of immigration status on Thursday condemned Greg Abbott “as one of our most irresponsible and desperate politicians.” The right-wing Texas governor, invigorated by the Supreme Court’s draft forced birth decision, has threatened to challenge the Plyler v. Doe decision.
Justices from 1982’s decision “recognized the folly in excluding certain kids from school,” Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) President Thomas A. Saenz said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “Abbott now seeks to inflict by intention the harms that nine justices agreed should be avoided 40 years ago.” Yes, this fits in with the GOP’s overall goal to decimate all public school education. But it's also undeniably part of Texas’ effort to use the courts to make life for immigrants as hellish as possible.
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“When it comes to immigration, Abbott has helped build the Texas segment of the anti-immigrant judicial pipeline, running from the courtrooms of like-minded federal judges through the Fifth Circuit appeals court and straight into the Supreme Court of the United States,” said America’s Voice legal advisor David Leopold.
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Just days ago, corrupt Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the state’s 11th immigration-related lawsuit against the Biden administration. The lawsuits have not been filed because the administration has acted unlawfully, but because corrupt Ken Paxton can file them on the flimsiest of grounds and still win. “It should come as no surprise that Abbott can now confidently broaden his war on immigrants to a brazen attack on undocumented children,” Leopold continued. “Abbott knows his judicial challenge to Plyler will land in the courtroom of one of his Republican political allies.”
It’s too early to tell exactly what other actors are behind Abbott’s idea, but don’t be shocked if Stephen Miller ends up in the mix.
That’s because the noted white supremacist reportedly sought to block undocumented kids from public education during the insurrectionist administration. “Ultimately, they abandoned the idea after being told repeatedly that any such effort ran afoul of a 1982 Supreme Court case guaranteeing access to public schools,” Time reported in 2019. The right-wing didn’t have a 6-3 court then. It has one now.
Former Department of Homeland Security official Gene Hamilton, a Miller ally and former Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III staffer, has also been fighting alongside Paxton in his action against the Biden administration. Hamilton “was a steadfast proponent of anti-immigrant policies while in the Senate and has carried that work into the Trump administration,” The Plot Against Immigrants previously said. Abbott publicly raised Plyler v. Doe several years ago, quote-tweeting some random, now-suspended user:
MALDEF said that the Supreme Court’s historic 1982 decision came after nearly five years of litigation. “The landmark case, Plyler v. Doe, grew out of a 1977 attempt by the Tyler Independent School District in Texas to oust the children of undocumented workers—farmhands, for the most part—from the school system by imposing tuition of as much as $1,000 per student to attend what were, for everyone else, free public schools.” MALDEF said. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote that “Education provides the basic tools by which individuals might lead economically productive lives to the benefit of us all.”
Abbott really has the gall to pretend that he’s concerned about education “expenses” when he’s spending billions in taxpayer funds on his racist Operation Lone Star border scheme. Texas in fact recently ballooned the stunt by another $500 million, raiding federal coronavirus money in the process. Rest assured Abbott’s prepared to waste millions more, and perhaps billions more, in the name of continued political power and racist animus, including denying brown children an education.
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Let's all say it together: Stephen Miller is a white supremacist