District Court Rules Trump Administration Policy Targeting Foreign Faculty’s and Students’ Speech Violates First Amendment

On September 30, 2025, in American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, a U.S. district judge ruled against the Trump administration in a First Amendment case involving the targeting of pro-Palestinian foreign faculty and students for visa revocation and deportation. The judge said the question was whether noncitizens lawfully present in the United States have the same free speech rights as U.S. citizens, and the answer was that “unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ “

The court found that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with their subordinates, “deliberately and with purposeful aforethought” coordinated their actions to intentionally “chill the rights to freedom of speech” and peaceful assembly of the noncitizen members of the plaintiff associations. The court ruled, among other things, that “the Plaintiffs have shown that Secretaries Noem and Rubio are 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. Such conduct is not only unconstitutional, but a thing virtually unknown to our constitutional tradition.”

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