Facing down leftist protesters, the Tennessee Senate on Thursday voted to approve a Republican-backed measure that would allow schools in the state to charge illegal aliens tuition.

The bill, introduced by Republican State Senator Bo Watson, seeks to deal with an influx of illegal aliens into the state who have strained the resources of local schools. Backers of the bill hope to challenge Plyler v. Doe, a Supreme Court decision that forced states to provide education to illegal aliens.

“The Plyler decision in 1982 was the voice of the court being imposed on the people,” Watson said. “This is the voice of the people being exercised through their elected officials.”

The legislation was approved 19-13 on Thursday, with some Republicans joining the Democrat minority in opposition to the bill, which has drawn weeks of activist protests at the state capitol in Nashville. Republicans who opposed the measure included Sens. Richard Briggs (Knoxville), Todd Gardenhire (Chattanooga), Ferrell Haile (Gallatin), Becky Massey (Knoxville), Mark Pody (Lebanon), Shane Reeves, and Page Walley (Savannah).

The bill passed Thursday would require schools to enroll all students who are able to provide documentation of citizenship or legal residency in the state. If a student cannot prove legal residency, the bill would authorize schools to require that student to pay tuition. If the student does not pay tuition, the school does not have to admit them.

“It’s been argued that undocumented illegal aliens pay sales tax and property tax,” Watson said. “True. But one doesn’t know if those payments come close to offsetting the additional costs. We argue they do not.”

An amendment added on to the bill says that the Tennessee General Assembly has the duty to “remove the burden of providing a free publicly funded education for illegal alien children from Tennessee taxpayers.”

A similar bill, sponsored by Majority Leader William Lamberth, is making its way through the House. That bill has so far made it through multiple key committees and is set to go before the Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee next week.

Earlier this year, the school board of Rutherford County, a suburban area southeast of Nashville, passed a resolution calling for the border to be closed, citing rising costs from the growth of non-English speakers in county schools.

The resolution, which was later rescinded after backlash, noted that the area had seen a 140% increase in its English Learner Population over the last ten years. The resolution said that the increasing numbers of ESL students are “creating exceptional financial pressures on school systems to provide the services which school systems are legally required to provide.”