Colorado residents who are children of illegal immigrants, but who themselves were born in the United States, are eligible to pay the cheaper in-state tuition rate at the state’s public colleges, Colorado’s attorney general ruled today, according to The Denver Post.

A 44-year-old state law requires colleges to determine whether to charge a student the in-state rate by looking at the residency of his or her parents. But the law does not specify how institutions should handle cases where the parents are illegal immigrants, the newspaper said.

Another law, which was enacted last year, prohibits taxpayer dollars from being used to benefit illegal immigrants, further complicating colleges’ ability to interpret what to do. David E. Skaggs, executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, asked John W. Suthers, the attorney general, to issue an opinion so that all public colleges would consistently deal with the issue.

Questions involving the eligibility of American citizens who are children of illegal immigrants to receive higher-education benefits have arisen in several other states. In Indiana, for instance, the state reached a settlement last December with the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana to end a class-action lawsuit that was filed on behalf of a high-school senior who was an American citizen but who was denied aid under a state scholarship program when she did not provide Social Security numbers for her parents, who are not legal residents. —Sara Hebel