17 states sue to block student-visa rules

Policy forces universities to choose between enrollment and safety, they say

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration Monday, seeking to block a new rule that would revoke the visas of foreign students who take classes entirely online in the fall.

The rule, issued a week ago, would upend months of careful planning by colleges and universities, the lawsuit says, and could force many students to return to their home countries during the pandemic, where their ability to study would be severely compromised.

“The Trump administration didn’t even attempt to explain the basis for this senseless rule, which forces schools to choose between keeping their international students enrolled and protecting the health and safety of their campuses,” Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney general, said in a statement announcing the suit, which accuses the administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act.

The action, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, is the latest legal effort to contest the federal edict, which has been described by states and universities in court filings as a politically motivated attempt by the Trump administration to force universities to hold in-person classes this fall, even as many have announced they will remain largely online because of health concerns.

California filed its own lawsuit last week, after Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had already gone to court seeking to block the new rule.

Arguments in the Harvard and MIT case are scheduled to be heard today, also in the district court in Boston.

More than 200 universities have signed court briefs supporting Harvard and MIT’s lawsuit.

The brief filed Monday by 59 universities says the policy throws their plans into disarray with less than a month before some schools start the fall term. They challenged the policy’s legal grounds and say it forces schools across the nation to “choose between opening their campuses regardless of the public health risks, or forcing their international students to leave the country.”

The group includes all of Harvard’s companions in the Ivy League and other prestigious schools including Stanford and Duke universities. They collectively enroll more than 213,000 international students.

“These students are core members of our institutions,” the schools wrote. “They make valuable contributions to our classrooms, campuses and communities — contributions that have helped make American higher education the envy of the world.”

A separate coalition of 180 colleges filed a brief saying colleges were “blindsided” by the policy. The group, known as the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, said it was a reversal of a March 13 directive from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that waived limitations around online education for foreign students “for the duration of the emergency.”

They point to data suggesting the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is higher now than it was in March.

“All seem to agree the emergency remains ongoing, but ICE’s policy has inexplicably changed,” the group wrote.

The federal guidance issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which says foreign students earning their degrees entirely online cannot stay in the United States, has sent students scrambling to enroll in in-person classes that are difficult to find.

Many universities are planning to offer a mix of online and in-person classes to protect the health of faculty, students and their surrounding communities during the pandemic.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended the administration’s actions at a news conference last week.

“You don’t get a visa for taking online classes from, let’s say, University of Phoenix. So why would you if you were just taking online classes, generally?” she told reporters, adding, “Perhaps the better lawsuit would be coming from students who have to pay full tuition with no access to in-person classes to attend.”

The area represented by the 17 states and the District of Columbia contains 1,124 colleges and universities that in 2019 had enrolled a combined 373,000 international students, who contributed an estimated $14 billion to the economy that year, according to the complaint.