A federal judge on Tuesday delivered an extraordinary 161-page rebuke of President Donald Trump, ruling that the administration impermissibly chilled the protected political speech of university professors and students by targeting non-citizens on college campuses who have spoken out in support of Palestine.
Judge William G. Young lambasted Trump and his administration for attacking free speech “under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of Anti-Semitism” used in efforts to deport non-citizen activists.
Notably, Young devoted more than a dozen pages of his decision to discussing in stark terms the president himself, the First Amendment and the state of the country, in ways seldom seen by any federal judge – let alone in a formal ruling.
Trump’s conduct, the judge wrote, violated the sacred oath of a president to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Young cited President Ronald Reagan, who nominated him in 1985, as saying that “freedom is a fragile thing” and must be fought for “constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”
That warning, Young said has been ignored.
“I fear (Trump) has drawn from it a darker, more cynical message” from Reagan, the judge wrote. “I fear 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.”
“Is he correct?” Young asked.
The case centers on efforts by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to deport pro-Palestinian non-citizen professors and students who’ve protested the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and their subordinates, Young wrote, “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.”
“They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right,” Young wrote.
Young, highlighting the significance of the case, wrote that it is “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court” and “squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
