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The Justice Department has sued Penn State, accusing the university of breaking federal law by letting some undocumented students pay in-state tuition while charging US citizens from other states more.

Getting into it: The lawsuit, filed Thursday, targets a Penn State policy that lets non-citizen students qualify for in-state rates if they went to high school in Pennsylvania for four or more years and got a diploma or GED there. At Penn State’s main campus, in-state tuition this school year is $20,878, less than half the $44,574 out-of-state students pay.

The Justice Department argues the policy violates a 1996 federal law barring states and public colleges from giving undocumented immigrants tuition benefits based on residency unless the same benefits are open to all US citizens. The DOJ is asking a judge to block the policy and stop Penn State from adopting any new tuition rules that favor undocumented students. Penn State said it’s reviewing the complaint.

In a statement, Brett Shumate (who heads the DOJ’s Civil Division) said, “Congress made a deliberate policy choice that states and their public institutions may not grant tuition benefits to illegal aliens unless those same benefits are made to all US citizens. This university has ignored that mandate.”

This is a new approach for the Trump administration, which had mostly gone after states rather than individual schools. Pennsylvania has no statewide policy giving undocumented students in-state rates, and the only other university the department has sued over the issue is the University of Delaware, last month.