WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday heavily criticized the Trump administration’s crackdown on free speech as he ruled in favor of foreign students the government has targeted for their support of Palestinian rights.
Massachusetts-based Judge William Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, ruled that foreign students enjoy the same free speech protections under the Constitution’s First Amendment as American citizens do.
He found that government officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, “deliberately and with purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions and those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble.”
Touching upon tensions within the judiciary on how to respond to harsh criticism from the administration, Young included a threatening message he had received via a postcard from an anonymous critic that read, “Trump has pardons and tanks …. what do you have?”
Young responded in a note at the top of his ruling, saying he had “nothing but my sense of duty.”
The 161-page decision included a final 13-page section that served as a damning indictment of President Donald Trump’s second term in office so far, portraying him as a vainglorious bully who is enacting an agenda based on retribution.
Young cited Trump’s orders that targeted law firms, universities and the media, which have fared badly in court, as examples.
“The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies — all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act,” Young wrote.
“The president’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech,” he added.
The lawsuit — brought by the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association — alleged that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by creating an ideological deportation policy to remove non-citizen campus activists for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiments.
During the trial, Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed that a majority of the names of student protesters flagged to the agency for potential deportation came from Canary Mission, a website run by an anonymous group that maintains a database of students, professors and others who, it claims, shared anti-Israel and antisemitic viewpoints.
High-profile examples include the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, who was involved in protests at Columbia University, and Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute, which represents the challengers, said in a statement the ruling should have an immediate impact on the Trump administration’s policies.
“If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t imprison people simply because it disagrees with their political views,” he added.
The foreign students’ case is not the first occasion on which Young has been involved in a high-profile dispute involving the Trump administration.
He previously blocked a Trump administration effort to cut teacher training grants, a decision that the Supreme Court overturned.
Young subsequently issued a similar decision against the administration over its planned cuts to health research grants. This too was blocked by the Supreme Court, prompting conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch to accuse Young of defying the justices.
In response, Young said in a later court hearing he had no intention to disobey the Supreme Court.
Chloe Atkins and Tyler Kingkade contributed.