“This policy punishes researchers for work the public needs and the First Amendment protects,” said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, who argued the motion before the court in May. “We’re glad the court recognized the serious constitutional harms this policy is already causing and blocked the government from enforcing it while the case proceeds.”

In today’s decision, Chief Judge James Boasberg concluded that the policy unconstitutionally discriminates against one set of viewpoints in the public debate surrounding social media. As he wrote, the policy “sweeps into the category of ‘foreign censorship’ a substantial measure of the research, reporting, advocacy, and association through which CITR and institutions like it carry out their protected work, and it does so on the basis of viewpoint, in violation of the First Amendment.”

“The Coalition welcomes Judge Boasberg’s decision, which will prevent the government from using immigration threats to intimidate and censor independent researchers,” said Brandi Geurkink, executive director of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research. “Researchers who work independently from the technology industry provide a much-needed window into the real impacts of these products on our lives and in our communities, and this policy has had a deep chilling effect on their work. Our coalition will continue to fight for the right to research free from government censorship.”

CITR members include research organizations, academics, and journalists who study digital platforms and their societal impacts. Their work helps inform public debate and enables consumers, advertisers, platforms, and policymakers to better understand emerging technologies and make more informed decisions.

“Today’s ruling is a major victory in our ongoing fight to protect free speech and independent technology research,” said Nicole Schneidman, tech counsel and policy strategist at Protect Democracy. “The court’s order allows researchers and advocates who study and report on online trust and safety to continue their important work without the fear of retaliatory visa denials or deportations while we continue to advocate for permanent relief. While this decision is an important win, this case is not over. We look forward to continuing to defend the rights of independent technology researchers.”

Read today’s decision by Chief Judge Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia here.

Read more about the case, Coalition for Independent Technology Research v. Rubio, here.

Lawyers on the case include Carrie DeCell, Raya Koreh, Kiran Wattamwar, Anna Diakun, Katie Fallow, Alex Abdo, and Jameel Jaffer for the Knight First Amendment Institute, and Nicole Schneidman, Scott Shuchart, and Deana El-Mallawany for Protect Democracy.

For more information, contact: Gabriel Tyler, gabriel.tyler@knightcolumbia.org. 

The following can be attributed to Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney and legislative advisor at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University: 

“The State Department is excluding tech researchers from the United States because of their constitutionally protected work, and this newly disclosed memo only underscores the unbounded scope and unconstitutionality of the policy. That the Trump administration claims its censorial policy is intended to combat censorship is the height of doublespeak.”

In March, the Knight Institute and Protect Democracy filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) challenging the constitutionality of the policy. The complaint argues that the policy violates the First Amendment and chills independent research and reporting about social media and other internet platforms.

Read more about the case here.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org 

The lawsuit alleges that the policy violates the First Amendment by penalizing particular viewpoints and deterring independent research about social media and other internet platforms. It also raises claims under the Fifth Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.

CITR’s motion asks the court to halt enforcement of the policy while the case proceeds, explaining that its members are already self-censoring by curtailing research, avoiding speaking publicly about their work, and limiting their participation in advocacy efforts for fear of being targeted by the government for their public-interest work.

CITR’s members include research institutions, academics, and journalists who study digital platforms and their societal impacts. Their work seeks to inform public debate so that consumers, advertisers, platforms, and policymakers can make informed decisions about emerging technologies.

The following can be attributed to Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute:

“The Trump administration claims that its new exclusion and deportation policy counters censorship, but it is itself censorship. In targeting independent researchers for studying and reporting on social media and other internet platforms, the policy punishes work that the First Amendment protects—and work that the public needs to understand how the platforms are shaping our society.”

The following can be attributed to Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index, a CITR member organization:

“Because of the policy, I’ve been prevented from traveling to the United States. I had to cancel meetings with colleagues and funders and postpone work that depends on in-person collaboration. That kind of disruption slows research, breaks down partnerships, and limits the exchange of ideas across borders.”

The following can be attributed to Brandi Geurkink, executive director of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research:

“Because of the government’s censorship policy, researchers are pulling back on studying critical topics and avoiding speaking publicly about their work, because they fear  they could be  detained or deported because of what they say. If this assault on research continues, people will be left without independent information about the impacts of AI and other digital platforms on our societies—at precisely the moment when we need it most.”

Read the preliminary injunction motion here.

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Carrie DeCell, Raya Koreh, Kiran Wattamwar, Anna Diakun, Katie Fallow, Alex Abdo, and Jameel Jaffer, for the Knight First Amendment Institute, and Naomi Gilens, Nicole Schneidman, Scott Shuchart, and Deana El-Mallawany, for Protect Democracy.

For more informtaion, contact: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org. 

“The Trump administration is using the threat of detention and deportation to suppress speech it disfavors,” said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney and legislative advisor at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “By targeting researchers and advocates for their work studying and reporting on social media platforms and online harms, the policy chills protected speech and distorts public debate about issues of profound public importance.”

Since his first term, President Trump and his allies have characterized the content moderation decisions of privately owned social media platforms as a form of “censorship” reflecting anti-conservative bias. In May 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a visa restriction policy aimed at foreign officials and other individuals who are allegedly “complicit in censoring Americans.” In early December 2025, news outlets reported that the State Department had instructed U.S. consular officers to scrutinize visa applicants—particularly H-1B applicants—for evidence of their work in fields including misinformation, disinformation, fact-checking, content moderation, trust and safety, and compliance, and to pursue findings of visa ineligibility if they deemed applicants “complicit” in censorship. Secretary Rubio subsequently applied the policy to one former EU regulator and four independent researchers and advocates—including the leaders of two CITR-member organizations—and indicated his willingness to expand its application. 

CITR’s members include research organizations, academics, journalists, and advocates who study digital platforms and their societal impacts. Their work seeks to identify online harms, improve user safety, and inform public debate.

“Researchers who help everyday people understand the impacts of Big Tech are scared that they and their families will be targeted for detention and deportation under this policy,” said Brandi Geurkink, executive director of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research. “At a time when AI is rapidly changing our lives and economy and people are already worried about their freedom and safety online, we need independent researchers more than ever. This policy is meant to censor researchers into silence and keep the public in the dark, and that’s exactly what it’s doing.”

The policy’s chilling effects spread beyond the community of independent researchers that CITR represents. According to news reports about the December 2025 State Department cable, which has not been made public, the policy reaches fact-checkers and online safety professionals whose work includes combating child exploitation, terrorism, and preventing fraud, human trafficking, and other forms of malicious behavior. This work involves research, analysis, and editorial judgment—work that is itself protected expressive activity. 

“This policy appears to be so broad and vague that it casts a shadow over a vast range of protected activity,” said Naomi Gilens, counsel at Protect Democracy. “The professionals working to keep the internet safe are left in fear, wondering whether doing their jobs could cost them their visas or trigger detention or deportation. Exploiting immigration policy to go after this kind of work doesn’t just hurt those individuals—it undermines the very systems that make the internet more trustworthy for all of us.”

Today’s complaint further alleges that the policy punishes CITR’s noncitizen members and others based on their perceived viewpoints; interferes with the rights of CITR and its U.S. citizen members to hear from and associate with noncitizen colleagues; is not sufficiently tailored to serve any legitimate governmental interest; and is impermissibly vague. The complaint also raises claims under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Read the complaint here.

Read more about the lawsuit, Coalition for Independent Technology Research v. Rubio, here.

Lawyers on the case include Carrie DeCell, Raya Koreh, Kiran Wattamwar, Anna Diakun, Katie Fallow, Alex Abdo, and Jameel Jaffer, for the Knight First Amendment Institute, and Naomi Gilens, Nicole Schneidman, Scott Shuchart, and Deana El-Mallawany, for Protect Democracy. 

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, adriana.lamirande@knightcolumbia.org 

The policy is the latest front in a campaign that began during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when he and his allies began targeting platform researchers, fact-checkers, and advocates by recasting their work as “censorship.” The government’s campaign against the so-called “censorship-industrial complex” has included lawsuits, administrative actions, and congressional investigations. In Trump’s second term, his administration extended that campaign into the immigration system.

Chief Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that the policy likely discriminates on the basis of viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment.

Announced as “a new visa restriction policy” in May 2025, the policy directs consular officers to scrutinize visa applicants for content-moderation work or other work relating to social media platforms that the administration characterizes as censorship. As the court found, the policy sweeps broadly, instructing officers to pursue visa denials based on a wide range of such work. In December 2025, the government expanded the policy beyond visa applicants, using it to subject lawful permanent residents to potential deportation based on work related to disinformation. In announcing these and other enforcement actions in December, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the State Department stood “ready and willing to expand” the list of targets.

The policy has disrupted the work of CITR and its members. CITR brings together academics, journalists, and civil society organizations working to advance, defend, and sustain independent research into technology’s effects on society. Researchers affiliated with CITR collect data, document disinformation and other online harms, and examine how technology companies enforce their rules and respond to risks on their platforms.

After the policy’s announcement, and especially after the government began enforcing it—against the leaders of two CITR member organizations, among others—noncitizen researchers began pulling back. Some halted or narrowed their work because they feared losing a visa or facing deportation. Others became reluctant to speak publicly about their research or about the policy’s effect on their work.

The result was a direct threat to a field that depends on researchers’ ability to scrutinize powerful companies and publish their findings openly. Work that had been reported in public was pushed toward anonymity and silence. The court found that these effects had caused CITR itself a concrete injury, allowing the organization to challenge the policy.

The court then concluded that the policy likely violates the First Amendment because it targets particular viewpoints. As the court explained, the policy calls for exclusion and deportation based solely on whether a noncitizen’s work is “pro-moderation.” The policy does not apply neutrally across the debate over platform governance. Instead, the government “presses its enforcement thumb against one side of the scale”: researchers and advocates who argue that platforms should do more to moderate content, label disinformation, restrict abuse, share data with researchers, or address harms amplified by their systems.

The government argued that the policy was necessary to protect Americans’ speech from coercion by foreign officials. The court acknowledged that the government may have a legitimate foreign policy interest in excluding foreign officials responsible for censoring Americans’ speech in the United States. But it concluded that the policy, as designed and applied, burdened the speech and association rights of researchers, academics, fact-checkers, and others who study content moderation or work in the field.

Because the policy discriminated against particular views, the court suspended it while the case proceeds.

This initial victory in CITR v. Rubio reflects a core constitutional principle: The government cannot punish people because it disfavors their speech, whether through immigration enforcement or other means.

That principle has also shaped other recent challenges to the administration’s treatment of noncitizen students, faculty members, and activists. In AAUP v. Rubio, a federal court likewise ruled that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment by seeking to arrest, detain, and deport noncitizen students and faculty engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Together, the cases signal growing judicial resistance to the use of immigration authority to shape public discourse.

The stakes are especially high for independent technology research. Researchers help the public understand how platforms shape political discourse, enforce their rules, amplify harmful material, and exercise power over the information people see. The work of these researchers is increasingly important as rapidly developing AI systems give technology companies even greater influence over public discourse and access to information. The government is free to dispute their findings and oppose their recommendations. It may not threaten exclusion or deportation to determine which questions may be asked, which conclusions may be published, or which views may enter public debate.

The ruling marks an important limit on the administration’s anti-“censorship” campaign: The government cannot claim to defend free expression while using immigration law to punish researchers and advocates for the views they express.