Stanford student journalists win First Amendment victory over free speech

A federal judge has delivered a First Amendment victory to a student news outlet at Stanford University. 

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On Friday, U.S. District Judge Noël Wise ruled that immigration provisions that allowed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to revoke student visas had a chilling effect on noncitizen student journalists at the Stanford Daily. Wise wrote that portions of two federal immigration provisions are unconstitutional when used against noncitizens for speech protected by the First Amendment. 

The Stanford Daily Publishing Corporation brought the lawsuit alongside two anonymous students unaffiliated with Stanford, though one student was later dismissed from the case. The plaintiffs were represented pro bono by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. 

“The reporters in our newsroom shouldn’t have to fear that writing a story will result in their deportation,” Daily editor-in-chief George Porteous wrote following the ruling. “Today’s victory means they won’t have to.” 

The decision came more than a year after the Daily alleged that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement had chilled reporting inside its newsroom. Many noncitizen students declined to cover pro-Palestinian protests and the war in Gaza, while some contributors stopped submitting opinion pieces and sources refused to speak on the record, the plaintiffs said. One noncitizen editor quit the newspaper because of concerns about their visa status. 

Another student reporter attended and conducted interviews at a vigil bringing together Jewish and Palestinian families but ultimately decided not to publish the story because of concerns about potential immigration consequences, according to the lawsuit. 

The lawsuit challenged portions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allow the secretary of State to deem a noncitizen deportable when their presence is determined to compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest and to revoke visas at the secretary’s discretion. 

The administration used the provisions to target university students for deportation, including Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk. Öztürk’s visa was revoked after she co-authored an opinion piece in the Tufts Daily criticizing the university’s response to the war in Gaza, according to court records. 

Wise rejected the government’s argument that the plaintiffs lacked standing because neither the Daily nor the remaining anonymous plaintiff had faced immigration enforcement themselves.

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“The government has offered a chilling message regarding protected speech—speak out against Israel or in support of Palestinians and we will revoke your visa and deport you,” Wise wrote. “Behave. Noncitizen students heard the warning and heeded. And, as the idiom goes, the silence is deafening.”

The judge ultimately found the challenged portions of both immigration provisions violated the First Amendment when enforced based on protected speech and were unconstitutionally vague under the Fifth Amendment.

“Stated plainly, in the United States, freedom of speech belongs to the people,” Wise wrote near the beginning of her 90-page ruling. “It is not the government’s to take.”

The court did not permanently block the provisions, but it declared them unconstitutional when used against protected speech under the First Amendment. 

“The Court’s ruling makes clear that under the First Amendment, no one in the United States should fear a midnight knock on the door from the government because they voiced the wrong opinion,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said in an emailed statement to SFGATE.

Stanford Daily’s Porteous, meanwhile, expressed confidence that the ruling meant student journalists would be able to return to business as usual.

“The Court’s decision will enable our reporters to focus on what they do best: asking tough questions and reporting the truth,” Porteous wrote.