A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a community college and advocacy groups cannot reopen a lawsuit that ended the Texas Dream Act and defend in-state tuition for undocumented students. 

The 2-1 ruling from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals comes a month after Austin Community College District, former University of North Texas student Oscar Silva, advocacy group La Unión del Pueblo Entero and Students for Affordable Tuition, a coalition of undocumented students, argued in court that they should be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit that struck down the Texas Dream Act last year. 

The Dream Act, enacted in 2001, granted undocumented students in-state tuition rates if they could show they had lived in Texas for three years before high school graduation. Texas ended the practice in June 2025 after an agreement between Gov. Greg Abbott, the U.S. Department of Justice and state Attorney General Ken Paxton found the law unconstitutional. 

In the majority opinion Thursday, Judge Jerry Smith agreed with the state and federal government that the practice violated federal law, which prohibits colleges from offering benefits to undocumented students unless citizens, including out-of-state residents, are also eligible. 

“Intervention is futile because federal law preempts the Challenged Provisions,” he wrote. 

In oral arguments last month, lawyers for the student groups said that undocumented students’ due process rights were violated when the Dream Act was dismantled over the course of a few hours last year, depriving them of an opportunity to weigh in. 

Abbott praised the ruling on social media Thursday.

“Texas and the Trump DOJ just secured another major victory for the rule of law,” Abbott wrote on X. “The Fifth Circuit upheld the END of in-state tuition for illegal immigrants in Texas.” 

This is a breaking story and will be updated. 

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