Effort to overturn Dream Act unconstitutional

Efforts to overturn the Maryland Dream Act granting undocumented resident aliens tuition rates at state colleges equal to those charged citizen residents of Maryland would have voters veto a clause of the 14th Amendment: "No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The interpretation that the equal protection clause covers everyone, citizen or not, was established in a Supreme Court decision in Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) and reaffirmed in Yamataya v. Fisher (1903) and in Pyler v. Doe (1982), the last ordered equal education for all in the elementary and secondary school levels. Extending that equality to college level is a valid application of those decisions.

A republic is a government in which the people exercise their power through elected representatives as legislators and elected officials as executives. A democracy is a government in which the people exercise their power directly. The records of the formation of our Constitution are clear that the republican form was to be adopted at both the federal and the state level.

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The exercise of the legislative power by direct ballot is contrary to the clearly stated original intent of the framers of the Constitution. It is not the "republican form of government" required of the states by Article IV of the Constitution nor is it a "due process of law" as required under the 14th Amendment.
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Thus, the referendum is unconstitutional in process as well as substance. What part of equal protection for every person is hard to understand? I guess all of it for all too many in Maryland with its long history of ethnic and racial hatreds.

And how much will Maryland waste trying to prevent equal protection of every person?

Ronald P. Bowers, Timonium

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opi...,1982063.story

Remember, this is just opinion, the current debate is at a court, but this is article is pure opinion, who knows what the judges will do.

The article is using a weak argument, the 14th Amendment is too broad and not gonna survive the court.

The better one is in Maryland's Constitution, any law that appropriates funding to a government program (Maryland DREAM Act & Public Colleges) cannot be put to a referendum.

Read more about it here http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/...ion-referendum

I came here expecting news, and all I got was an opinion piece....