California district judge Noël Wise held that the US government may not revoke F-1 visas, or threaten to do so, based on international students’ speech in the US.
He ruled in favour of Stanford Daily and two pseudonymous students, maintaining that international students in the US hold “the right to freedom of speech” and “protection from government retribution based on hostility toward speech.”
While the administration has “significant authority” on foreign policy and national security, “even in those arenas, the government’s authority is constrained by First Amendment rights”, Wise ruled.
“Foundational to America’s enduring democracy are our freedoms of speech and the press embodied in the First Amendment.”
The case was brought by Stanford Daily last year and supported by 55 student media outlets, among other organisations, alleging the Trump administration’s visa revocations, arrests and deportations of F-1 visa holders stifled student speech across the US.
“Noncitizen students heard the warning and heeded. And, as the idiom goes, the silence is deafening,” wrote Wise.
American higher education would be impoverished if students from abroad were not guaranteed the freedom to speak and write as they please
Thomas Berry, Cato Institute
The lawsuit challenged thousands of student visa revocations by the US government last year, alongside high-profile arrests and attempted deportations of F-1 visa holders for their protest attendance, association with pro-Palestine groups, social media posts and op-eds.
Ultimately, the judgement reaffirmed that immigration status cannot be wielded to punish constitutionally protected speech.
It drew heavily on a previous lawsuit brought against Rubio by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which similarly found the administration’s policy of arresting, detaining and deporting noncitizen students for their pro-Palestinian advocacy to be unlawful under the First Amendment.
In the latest case, Wise ruled in favour of the plaintiffs’ argument that the government used two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act unconstitutionally and that the secretary of state’s authority to deport individuals deemed to threaten national security, does not overrule free-speech protections.
What’s more, he said the deportation provision used by Rubio was unconstitutionally vague for allowing deportations based on the secretary’s personal determination, which would require visa holders to guess what he deems to constitute a compelling foreign policy interest.
Thomas Berry, the director of the Robert A Levy Centre for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute – one of several organisations to file an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs – said the court’s decision was “exactly right”.
“American higher education would be impoverished if students from abroad were not guaranteed the freedom to speak and write as they please on American campuses.”
He called on the administration to “end its open hostility to noncitizen campus speech and agree to no longer threaten retribution for the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
