Day v. Bond

Kansas enacted a statute that provided in-state college tuition to certain undocumented Kansas students. To qualify for in-state tuition, an undocumented student was required to have attended high school in Kansas for at least three years and to have graduated from a Kansas high school or received a Kansas General Educational Development (GED) certificate. Kristen Day and other out-of-state students attending Kansas colleges (the nonresident students) (plaintiffs) challenged the statute, arguing that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection clause by discriminating against nonresident students who were United States citizens. The nonresident students advanced four theories in support of their claim: (1) the statute erected barriers that made it impossible for nonresident students to obtain the same lower tuition rate as qualifying undocumented students; (2) the statute unlawfully burdened nonresident students with higher tuition rates for the purpose of subsidizing the educational costs of qualifying undocumented students; (3) the statute placed nonresident students on unequal footing in a competition for scarce resources; and (4) the statute caused nonresident students to pay tuition higher than the tuition paid by undocumented students. The district court dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing, and the nonresident students appealed.