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Case argues noncitizens who are in U.S. legally shouldn’t be afraid of speaking their opinions
A federal court recently refused to dismiss a lawsuit that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration for allegedly violating international students’ right to free speech at Stanford University.
“We’re pleased with the court’s ruling. Deporting lawfully present noncitizens because of their opinions violates the First Amendment and betrays America’s commitment to freedom of speech,” Conor Fitzpatrick, supervising senior attorney for FIRE, told The College Fix via email last week.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of The Stanford Daily and two noncitizens, contends that the First Amendment protects foreign students’ right to free speech while they are in the U.S. legally.
The campus free speech group alleges that students with visas who write for Stanford’s student newspaper “are declining assignments related to the conflict in the Middle East, worried that even reporting on the war will endanger their immigration status.”
After FIRE filed the lawsuit in September, the Trump administration asked a federal judge to dismiss it, arguing that the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the statutes.
However, the Northern District Court of California rejected the administration’s motion to dismiss on Jan. 16, meaning the case can move forward.
Next, both sides will propose a plan for when and how the court will resolve the case on the merits, Fitzpatrick said.
“We feel confident that the First Amendment will prevail and lawfully present noncitizens should not have to fear deportation for expressing an opinion the government doesn’t like,” he told The Fix.
The case challenges two immigration statutes that Rubio and the Department of State are using to allegedly target noncitizens for deportation based on protected speech.
One gives the Secretary of State the power to “initiate deportation proceedings against any noncitizen for protected speech if the secretary ‘personally determines’ the speech ‘compromises a compelling foreign policy interest,’” according to the campus free speech organization.
The other provision being challenged lets Rubio revoke noncitizens’ visas “’at any time’ for any reason,” according to the lawsuit.
The case alleges these provisions are having a muffling effect on speech for foreign students at Stanford.
When contacted about the lawsuit, the media relations office for the Department of State told The Fix via email that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.
The two individual plaintiffs, Jane Doe and John Doe, are “legal noncitizens with no criminal record,” but they are afraid of being deported for “engag[ing] in pro-Palestinian speech” on campus, according to FIRE.
“We are asking the courts to declare that the two statutes Secretary Rubio is relying upon to target noncitizens like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk violate the First Amendment to the extent they allow visa revocation or deportation based on protected speech,” Fitzpatrick said.
Khalil, an international student at Columbia University, and Ozturk, an international student at Tufts University, are not plaintiffs in the case, but the lawsuit mentions both as examples of the Trump administration allegedly “aggressively targeting lawfully present noncitizens for protected speech, particularly at universities.”
Both were involved in pro-Palestinian activism on their campuses. In the case of Khalil, the Trump administration alleged he “sid[ed] with terrorists, Hamas terrorists, who have killed innocent men, women, and children” and handed out fliers at Columbia with the Hamas terrorist group’s logo, according to the lawsuit.
Fitzpatrick hopes the case will “firmly cement” the First Amendment as barring the government from deporting lawfully present noncitizens based on their speech.
The goal is to “establish that the First Amendment prohibits deporting and revoking the visas of lawfully present noncitizens for engaging in protected speech,” he told The Fix in September.
Previously, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis told The Fix that the overall legal situation regarding noncitizens’ rights is “complicated and contested.”
However, Professor Gregory Magarian said he believes that “even if non-citizens did not have a valid direct claim of First Amendment rights (which, again, I believe they do), their expressive freedom should still be protected for the sake of citizens’ interest in hearing what they have to say.”
MORE: ‘Pro-Palestinian extremists’ dominate U. Maryland student gov’t: report
