Bruce Lesley, head of First Focus on Children, looks at the current threat to Plyler v. Doe, and why it matters.
In the fall of 1977, eight-year-old Laura Alvarez was preparing to enter the third grade in Tyler, Texas. Then her family was told she and her siblings could no longer attend school. The Tyler Independent School District (ISD) and Superintendent James Plyler had decided to charge undocumented children $1,000 a year in tuition – a fee her father’s meatpacking plant wages could not sustain for five children. On the first day of school, as her mother brought the child to the door, the principal was required to turn her away.
That act of organized cruelty by Tyler ISD – turning children away at schoolhouse doors – is what eventually produced Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court decision holding that Texas violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by denying undocumented children a public education.
For more than two generations of students, Plyler has stood as one of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions about children in American constitutional history.
As a child growing up in El Paso, Texas – more than 700 miles from Tyler, where Plyler originated – that Supreme Court decision was vital to my own community and its children. It ensured generations of students received the education they deserved and kept public schools from being turned into quasi-immigration enforcement agents.
Growing up, I had close friends, neighbors, classmates, and teammates whose families were directly affected by Plyler. They taught me much about life, and they have gone on to lead impressive lives that have benefitted their families, their communities, and our nation – all because a Supreme Court decision kept their schoolhouse doors open.
Children, families, neighborhoods, communities, and the nation would all be worse off if the Supreme Court had ruled differently in Plyler v. Doe.
Unfortunately, the Plyler decision is under the most serious threat of its existence.