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WASHINGTON (CN) — A coalition of technology researchers sued the Trump administration on Monday to challenge a travel ban placed on individuals combatting disinformation and hate speech on social media platforms that the coalition describes as a “censorship policy.”
The Coalition for Independent Technology Research filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, rejecting the government’s assertion that the policy is a response to the “censorship” of right-wing Americans and is instead a “flagrant violation” of the First Amendment.
“Despite defendants’ characterization, the work by the private individuals and organizations targeted by the censorship policy is not ‘censorship,’” the coalition said.
“To the contrary, when independent researchers and advocates study the internet platform or express their views about the content moderation policies of those platforms, and when the platform’s employees work to develop or enforce those policies, they are engaged in private expressive activity that the First Amendment protects,” the group continued. “It is defendants’ campaign to suppress that expressive activity that violated the Constitution.”
The government has already begun enforcing the policy, effectively chilling the activities of noncitizen members of the coalition, the group said.
On Dec. 23, the State Department announced it would exclude or deport five individuals under the policy, including two leaders of the coalition’s member organizations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that the “State Department stands ready and willing to expand” the list of targets if others “do not reverse course.”
The coalition highlighted parallels between Rubio’s warning and the Trump administration’s wider mass deportation campaign, where several individuals have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, both of whom initially avoided deportation thanks to court intervention.
As a result of Rubio’s action, the coalition said several of their noncitizen members who live in the United States have stopped working on research projects, stopped speaking publicly about their work, declined invitations to conferences and limited or ended public engagement with the coalition.
Others are planning to leave the country, all of which have significantly harmed the coalition’s interests and those of its American members.
Carrie DeCell, attorney for the case and legislative adviser at the Knight First Amendment Institute, slammed the policy in a statement.
“The Trump administration is using the threat of detention and deportation to suppress speech it disfavors,” DeCell said. “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.”
According to the coalition, the State Department’s policy discriminates based on viewpoint by specifically targeting noncitizens for their work combatting misinformation and disinformation and their advocacy for certain content moderation policies that the government views as targeting conservatives online.
Researchers who have criticized the lax content moderation policies on X since Elon Musk’s takeover have been singled out for punishment, the coalition argues.
“The censorship policy punishes expressive activity for no legitimate governmental purpose,” the coalition said. “Defendants claim that the policy serves the government’s interest in protecting the right of Americans to speak on social media platforms, but, as the Supreme Court made clear just two years ago, the government has not compelling or even legitimate interest in dictating what speech private companies should publish.”
“As the court wrote: ‘On the spectrum of dangers to free expression, there are few greater than allowing the government to change the speech of private actors in order to achieve its own conception of speech nirvana,’” the coalition cited. “It follows that the government has no legitimate interest in punishing private actors who advocate for one set of content moderation policies or another, or who develop and implement those policies on behalf of the platforms.”
Brandi Geurkink, executive director of the coalition, said in a statement that independent researchers are more important than ever as artificial intelligence takes a larger role in the global economy and society.
“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,” Geurkink said. “This policy is meant to censor researchers into silence and keep the public in the dark, and that’s exactly what it’s doing.”
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