U. student may sue over tuition

University of Utah freshman Susel Najar, 20, says it's a struggle to pay out-of-state tuition.

Najar is legally a Connecticut resident, and she believes it's not fair that as a naturalized U.S. citizen she's paying more to go to college than some undocumented immigrants.

Najar is one of a handful of U. students considering a court challenge to a Utah law that makes any student eligible for in-state tuition, regardless of legal status, if they attended a Utah high school for three years and graduated from a Utah high school.

"Giving in-state tuition to undocumented students is giving them residency," she said. "We students who are legal residents, we are paying taxes. It doesn't make sense. It's not fair."

In an analysis of the law before it took effect, Utah Assistant Attorney General Bill Evans said it does give U.S. citizens equal access to the benefits provided undocumented immigrants as required by federal law. It's tied, Evans said, to a person's high school attendance, not residency or legal status.

"Anyone who attends a Utah high school, legal or illegal, qualifies," he said. "You give the same kind and amount of benefit to anybody, documented or undocumented."

For example, he said if someone went to high school in Utah, moved to another state, then came back, they'd be eligible for in-state tuition. So would someone who might live on a border town in a different state but attends a Utah high school.

Najar says she'll decide on the legal challenge after seeing how arguments go in a scheduled April 25 hearing in a federal lawsuit. That lawsuit claims a similar Kansas statute violates federal law by granting a privilege to undocumented students for which some U.S. citizens aren't eligible.

The Kansas lawsuit says federal law "expressly bars an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States" from any postsecondary education benefit not available to a U.S. citizen, regardless of the citizen's residency.

Utah House Education Chairwoman Margaret Dayton said the tuition law, which failed to move out of committee this past session, is a priority to be discussed during the interim.

Systemwide, 117 students took advantage of Utah's law in its first year — the 2003-2004 school year — for a total tuition reduction of $299,000, said Amanda Covington, spokeswoman for the Utah System of Higher Education.