As the Tennessee General Assembly advances amended legislation requiring schools to collect anonymized citizenship data, legal commentator and retired attorney Mark Pulliam said the effort could lay the groundwork for a broader constitutional challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Plyler v. Doe.
The revised version of House Bill 0793, introduced by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), removes earlier provisions that would have allowed school districts to deny enrollment or charge tuition to illegal alien students. Instead, it focuses solely on requiring schools to gather and report anonymized citizenship data to the state.
In 1982, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plyler v. Doe barred states from denying free public education to children based on immigration status.
During Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Pulliam sharply criticized the landmark ruling and the court at the time that produced it.
“It was a 5-4 decision,” he noted, adding that it was authored by Justice William Brennan, “the most notorious liberal justice of the modern era.”
Pulliam argued that the decision was flawed from the start and has not received the same scrutiny as other controversial rulings.
“This decision, Plyler v. Doe, is as full of error as Roe v. Wade, yet it has received very little criticism, at least compared to Roe v. Wade,” he noted.
Pulliam further described the legal reasoning behind the ruling as deeply problematic.
“Doctrinally, the decision has always been gibberish, and now that we’re in an originalist world, it’s gibberish on steroids,” he said.
According to Pulliam, the Tennessee legislation’s focus on data collection is a strategic move aimed at eventually revisiting the precedent.
“I think that the collection of data authorized by proposed legislation in Tennessee is a sensible first step to a legal challenge to Plyler v. Doe,” he explained, going on to emphasize that lawmakers need concrete numbers to build a case that educating illegal alien students places a significant financial burden on the state.
“We’re not gonna know this until we do the math and do a head count, and then we can kind of put this case in front of the public,” he added.
Pulliam also argued that public awareness of the costs could shift opinion.
“If Tennesseans knew how much it was costing them in taxpayer funds to educate all these illegal aliens, I think there would be an outcry,” he said.
Acknowledging how some have pushed for more aggressive action, Pulliam defended the incremental approach taken by lawmakers, noting, “In something like this, you need to move incrementally. You need to do your homework first.”
He added that gathering data would help build the legal and political case needed for future action.
“We need to figure out how many illegal aliens we have enrolled in our schools, and then figure out how much it’s costing,” he said.
Beyond financial concerns, Pulliam contended that current policy incentivizes illegal immigration, saying, “Free K-12 education is a giant magnet for illegal immigration. It might be the greatest magnet.”
Pulliam argued that the current system is unsustainable, stressing, “By educating these illegal alien children, you are attracting more and more and more of them… this is national suicide.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
