Hanover — Dartmouth College and 18 other universities earlier this month signed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program.

The case, brought by Texas and six other states in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas on May 1, aims to end the program — also known as DACA — which protects hundreds of thousands of people, known as “Dreamers,” who were brought to the U.S. as children and lack citizenship and legal documentation for residency.

In their July 20 brief, the universities contend that discontinuing DACA “would deter young people from pursuing higher education and preclude the remarkable students enrolled at (the schools filing the brief) from deriving the full benefit of time on our campuses.”

In addition to Dartmouth, the other schools that signed on to the brief include Brown University, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis and Yale University.

“As an institution, we view the continuation of DACA as both a moral imperative and a national necessity,” Dartmouth spokeswoman Diana Lawrence said in a news release issued last week. “We are a community that values diversity, aware that it significantly enhances the quality of an education, and DACA therefore is a contributing factor to the success of the College.”

In addition to Texas, the other states that filed the May suit include Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia.