Alex Abdo

@alexabdo.bsky.social

12203 Followers 345 Following

Litigation Director, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University (he/him)

The problem is, and always has been, that playing with executive power is a dangerous game, and its consequences are hard and perhaps impossible to contain. If critics of the Trump boat strikes truly want to usher in a new era of respect for the rule of law, they must acknowledge that, in the shadow of the mounting democratic menace that Trump’s entire second administration represents, the legal process that yielded these strikes should not be seen as an aberration from the last quarter century of always-secret and often-unreviewable executive-branch legal reasoning, but the apotheosis of it.
Quoting from Justice Roberts in a recent decision
ICE post on X saying its job is to stop certain ideas from crossing the border.
Selection of linked legal brief: The ideological-deportation policy violates the First Amendment because it suppresses protected expression based on its viewpoint. As an initial matter, the speech at issue here—criticism of Israel’s policies, criticism of our own government’s policies relating to the Middle East, and advocacy of Palestinian rights—is at the very core of the First Amendment’s protection. This speech “is at the heart of current political debate among American citizens,” Ragbir v. Homan, 923 F.3d 53, 69 (2d Cir. 2019), cert. granted, judgment vacated on other grounds sub nom. Pham v. Ragbir, 141 S. Ct. 227 (2020), and accordingly the ideological-deportation policy “trenches upon an area in which the importance of First Amendment protections is at its zenith,” id. at 70 (quoting Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 421–22, 425 (1988)); see also Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030, 1034 (1991). That the speakers here are noncitizens does not change the analysis. As explained above, Plaintiffs assert the rights of their U.S. citizen members to receive information and ideas, and also assert their own rights as U.S.-based organizations. Plaintiffs and their U.S. citizen members are unquestionably entitled to the full scope of First Amendment protections. In any case, it is wellsettled that noncitizens living in the United States “are entitled to the full panoply of First Amendment rights.” Am.-Arab Anti-Discrimination Comm. v. Reno, 70 F.3d 1045, 1063–66 (9th Cir. 1995); see also Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135, 148 (1945) (“Freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.”); Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding, 344 U.S. 590, 596 n.5 (1953) (the First and Fifth Amendments do not “acknowledge[] any distinction between citizens
Selected text from the linked article: Who becomes a trustee? At Columbia there are 21, all of them from business, law and technology, with the exception of a former journalist. Although they are in charge of an academic institution, none of them is an academic. None as ever led a classroom or a lab meeting or medical rounds with interns. None has gone through the process of tenure, where their teaching, publication record and service are rigorously assessed by colleagues in the field both from within the institution and outside it. None as ever had their work peer-reviewed by anonymous readers or panels of experts. None has ever published in academic or scientific journals or presses and had their ideas debated in the public sphere. None has ever framed a hypothesis and tested it on the basis of evidence they have collected. None, in short, has sought truth and had their search confirmed by objective scholars and scientists. * * * The Columbia board is by no means unique. The same situation prevails, with few exceptions, across the Ivy League and its peer institutions (exemplary is the University of Chicago). As far as public universities are concerned, though there are some variations among several of the flagships, such as the regents of the universities of California, Michigan and Wisconsin, they are typically composed of lawyers, politicians and businessmen, and generally appointed by governors of individual states. Their accountability is hard to locate in their charter documents, and their near-autonomous powers are wide-ranging. In these regards, they are very much like their private counterparts.
Text of quote: “The Trump administration’s retaliation against Mr. Ragbir was calculated to silence not only him, but also the crucial voices of other advocates directly impacted by the federal government’s immigration policies,” said Ramya Krishnan, senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute. “Pardoning Mr. Ragbir would send an important message about the constitutional legitimacy of this kind of advocacy, and about the impermissibility of government retaliation against those engaged in it.”
Relevant excerpt from the court's opinion.
Relevant excerpt from the court's opinion.
Caption page of the Third Circuit opinion.