First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley told the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government in testimony for the record that Plyler v. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court decision holding that states may not deny undocumented children access to public education, ensured generations of students received the education they deserved and kept public schools from being turned into quasi-immigration enforcement agents.
“This hearing is titled “The Adverse Effects of Plyler v. Doe,” but the title got it backwards,” he wrote in the testimony submitted for the March 18, 2026 hearing titled Immigration Policy by Court Order: The Adverse Effects of Plyler v. Doe. “With respect, I would suggest the Subcommittee consider a different question entirely: what would the adverse effects of overturning Plyler be? The answer, as Justice Brennan’s majority opinion makes plain – and as even the dissenters acknowledged – is the deliberate condemnation of innocent children to a lifetime of illiteracy.”