A federal district judge in Massachusetts ruled in AAUP v. Rubio that the First Amendment protects the speech of noncitizens, just as it protects citizens, in a case involving President Donald Trump’s efforts to revoke visas and deport certain noncitizen student and faculty members.
The American Association of University Professors, including chapters at Harvard University, New York University and Rutgers, and the Middle East Studies Association filed the lawsuit, claiming the Trump administration removed and sought to remove individuals based on their pro-Palestinian views.
The suit named Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Todd Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
The case involved nine days of testimony and 250 exhibits. Federal Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, ruled on Sept. 30, 2025, that many of the actions shown to have been taken against immigrants exercising political speech had violated the First Amendment and federal laws.
In a highly unusual move, the judge prefaced his opinion with an anonymous postcard that his office had received, which threatened “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS… WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” The judge had responded with “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States – you and me – have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case.”
The judge also noted in the preface the words of the First Amendment, which he noted were carved in New Hampshire granite on the exterior of his courthouse.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Young observed that President Trump believes that “the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech applies to American citizens alone, and to an unconstitutionally narrow view of citizenship at that…”
Young said the case concerned whether lawfully present noncitizens in the United States “have the same free speech rights as the rest of us.”
“The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ ‘No law’ [in the First Amendment] means ‘no law.’
Interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act
The decision also cited the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which specifies that a noncitizen is generally not “excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States” based on the noncitizen’s “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the Unites States” absent a determination that they “would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest.”
Judge Young did not think the government had properly distinguished those who had exercised First Amendment rights from those who had directly supported terrorism or engaged in acts of violence.
He noted that the administration had adopted a broad understanding of antisemitism and had singled out people who opposed U.S. policies toward Israel. He cited the cases of permanent residents Yunseo Chung and Mahmoud Khalil, both of whom had joined pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, as well as Bakar Akan Suri at Georgetown University, and Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University, the latter of whom had been arrested by officers wearing masks.
“It was never the Secretaries’ immediate intention to deport all pro-Palestinian non-citizens for that obvious First Amendment violation, that could have raised a major outcry. Rather the intent of the Secretaries was more invidious — to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similiarly situatied non-citizens (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome,” the judge wrote.
Discrimination over viewpoints
Judge Young was particularly scandalized by the idea that ICE agents had worn masks when making some of these arrests. Concluding that they had worn the masks in an attempt “to terrorize Americans into quiescence,” he associated the practice “with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan.”
The judge concluded that the plaintiffs had established that the administration’s policy had discriminated against individuals based on their viewpoints in a manner that chilled the exercise of First Amendment freedoms by others.
He ruled that the secretaries had “engaged in a mode of enforcement leading to detaining, deporting, and revoking noncitizens’ visas solely on the basis of political speech, and with the intent of chilling such speech and that of others similarly situated.” Whatever standard of review the court applied to justify these actions, the government would be unable to meet it, he wrote.
Judge Young also concluded that the government had exercised its rights arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.
“Nothing in the text, history, or tradition of the First Amendment suggests that persons lawfully present here may be subject to adverse action based on their political speech, where that speech is primarily concerned with the actions of foreign nations with whom the United States is not at war and Congress has not made a specific determination that a specific organization threatens the violent overthrow of the government. This is a new invention that in important ways goes beyond its closest analogues in the Red Scare,” Young wrote.
Noting the government’s argument that immigrants were in the United States as a matter of “grace,” or “privilege,” Judge Young agreed that immigrants are “our guests,” but drew different conclusions: “How we treat our guests is a question of constitutional scope, because who we are as a people and as a nation is an important part of how we must interpret the fundamental laws that constrain us. We are not, and must not become, a nation that imprisons and deports people because we are afraid of what they have to tell us.”
Quoting Justice Louis Brandeis’ concurring opinion in Whitney v. California (1927), the judge observed that “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. ... If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, ... the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.”
Concerns over Trump
In what is arguably obiter dicta, inessential to the specific legal issue, Judge Young reviewed “Justice in the Trump era,” citing the idea of the unitary presidency and attempting to explain Trump’s success in imposing his will on others.
He decried the fact that the nation’s law firms, media outlets and institutions of higher learning had largely capitulated to Trump’s demands, pointed to Ronald Reagan’s view of the fragility of freedom, and said that he feared that “President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.” He rhetorically asked, “Is he correct?”
Judge Young further scheduled a hearing to ascertain an appropriate remedy. Inviting the individual who anonymously authored a postcard to return to watch a jury trial, he observed that “Where a jury sits, there burns the lamp of liberty.”
Implications
This case presents a strong defense of the First Amendment rights of legal immigrants but will almost certainly be appealed to higher courts. They might put greater emphasis, as they have done in some other cases, on presidential powers related to foreign policy matters.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.