In 1975, the state of Texas passed a law prohibiting the use of state funds to educate undocumented immigrants, and Tyler Independent School District’s superintendent James Plyler subsequently required that undocumented children be charged tuition for attending public schools. Lawyers on behalf of Mexican children in the Tyler Independent School District (as John Doe, et al.) filed a class-action suit that same year claiming that the law was unconstitutional, and in 1982 the Supreme Court ruled that the Texas law violated the Fourteenth Amendment, specifically the Equal Protection Clause, which applies to all persons regardless of citizenship or immigration status. While supporters of the Texas statute argued that the presence of undocumented children in public schools would diminish the quality of education and denying them enrollment would help curb illegal immigration, the Court upheld that there was no merit to either theory and no legal or constitutional basis for the Texas law.