Tech Policy Press - Dispatch from the Coalition for Independent Technology Research v. Rubio District Court Hearing
CJL Director Courtney Radsch joins the talk on how Trump administration’s visa restriction policy targeting noncitizen researchers, fact-checkers, and trust and safety workers is a dangerous attack on independent research and free expression, warning that it could chill the study of platform harms, weaken democratic accountability, and let the government decide who is allowed to scrutinize powerful tech companies.
I spent Wednesday morning at a federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., as a judge heard arguments in Coalition for Independent Technology Research v. Rubio, the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration visa restriction policy on researchers who study social media and online harms. As a member of CITR who has worked with some of the affected researchers over the years, I’ve seen and felt firsthand the chilling effect of the administration’s crackdown on independent research, science, and expression. It felt important to be there.
The policy—first announced in May 2025 and followed by various public statements—targets noncitizen researchers, fact-checkers, and trust and safety workers for visa denials, revocations, detention, and deportation based on their expression and professional associations. It gives the Secretary of State enormous, largely unreviewable discretion to bar any foreign national whose entry or proposed activities in the United States would have "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences." As the judge seemed to grasp, the provision was clearly designed with foreign government officials and genuine state actors in mind, not academics and experts, although subsequent statements by Trump administration officials later in the year undermined this formulation.
The hour-long hearing kicked off with US District Judge James E. Boasberg describing the four primary issues he saw as relevant, including: whether there is a single policy or more than one at issue, standing (does CITR or its members even have the right to even bring this case), the constitutional merits of the case with respect to the First Amendment in particular, and remedies. CITR, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Protect Democracy, filed the original complaint in March then moved for a preliminary injunction and a Section 705 stay (asking the court to halt enforcement of the policy while the litigation proceeds), which the government predictably opposed.
The government has framed its policy as a response to "censorship" of American speech online by foreign governments, even though the people actually being targeted by the policy study a range of phenomena, including platform advertising practices, content moderation, and children's exposure to harmful content. The plaintiff attorney, Carrie DeCell of the Knight First Amendment Institute, did a masterful job of laying out how the policy punishes people for their viewpoints and professional associations, chilling not just the speech of noncitizen researchers but the First Amendment rights of their US citizen colleagues who have a constitutional interest in hearing from them. I find that it directly chills citizen expression because people have told me they don’t want to study or speak out on these issues for fear of retaliation and the unknown, such as being pulled aside at the border or investigated for who knows what.
Read full article here.