Columbia Global Freedom of Expression seeks to contribute to the development of an integrated and progressive jurisprudence and understanding on freedom of expression and information around the world.  It maintains an extensive database of international case law. This is its newsletter dealing with recent developments  in the field.

As American courts weigh in on President Trump’s attacks against university students and journalists, we are featuring three recent US cases on freedoms of speech and the press. One concerns the Associated Press (AP), which sued the Trump administration on First Amendment grounds: In February, the White House barred the AP from certain press events over its refusal to adopt the term “Gulf of America.”

Jon Allsop writes Columbia Journalism Review’s flagship daily newsletter “The Media Today.”
He is a freelance journalist, whose work also appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, among other places. Read the full interview here. Photo: courtesy of Jon Allsop

Marija Šajkaš: It has been over six weeks since the ruling—is the government complying with it, and has AP’s access problem been resolved? We know that this is an evolving issue. 

Jon Allsop: After the judge ruled that the White House should end its ban on the AP, the administration allowed a journalist from the agency to enter an event in the White House, and photographers to return to the Oval Office. But even this initial compliance appeared patchy, with AP lawyers claiming that they’d been told the outlet would still be excluded from the “press pool,” the small rotating group of journalists that travels with the president on behalf of the entire news media. Then, the administration removed a spot in the pool that had traditionally been dedicated to wire services—meaning the AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg—instead lumping those outlets in with print media more generally; on the first day of the new policy, the right-wing Daily Signal was included instead. This looked like an effort to continue to punish the AP in a way that didn’t look as targeted, since it affected other outlets, too (though the AP said it still violated the court order). And the White House having control over the pool at all is new—until this year, its composition was decided by the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Marija Šajkaš: In your recent commentary, you noted that the AP ruling appeared to push the story to the “hopeful side of the ledger.” Are there other examples that you feel also signal hope for press freedom?

Jon Allsop: My overall view of this moment is that the administration has initiated a series of tug-of-war fights with media outlets, in which the momentum is constantly shifting, and the ultimate outcome remains unclear: Trump tries to defund NPR, but NPR fights back in court; one judge orders the administration to hand over the budget of Voice of America and its sister broadcasters, which Trump is also trying to gut, before another one sides with the administration; and so on. The AP ruling was “hopeful” at the time in the sense that it won its case on its clear First Amendment merits, and we’ve seen other such victories, too. These are important, clearly. But these fights aren’t yet resolved; the administration appealed the AP ruling, for instance. And even at the time, it was a mitigated hope given the other things the White House can do, and in some cases now has done, to restrict access and bully the press without crossing legal tripwires. In the end, it’s all relative. Again, it’s important that a court upheld the clear First Amendment principle at stake in the AP’s case. But in some ways, the White House wins just by having the fight.

United States
Mahdawi v. Trump
Decision Date: April 30, 2025
A United States District Court granted a habeas corpus motion for an individual arrested immediately after completing his immigration naturalization interview. The arrest appeared to be in retaliation for his peaceful political speech in student protests criticizing Israel’s war on Gaza and thus raised substantial questions under the First Amendment (free speech rights) and Fifth Amendment (due process) of the U.S. Constitution. The individual had lived in the U.S. as a lawful permanent resident for more than 10 years and was detained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, based on a determination made by the Secretary of State that his presence posed serious adverse foreign-policy consequences. The Court found that the individual’s core political expression was protected, that his detention served no legitimate regulatory purpose, and that extraordinary circumstances of the risk of irreparable chilling of free speech warranted bail. Finding no flight risk or danger to the community, the Court ordered his immediate release on personal recognizance, subject to conditions ensuring his residence, travel limitations, and attendance at all future proceedings.

American Association of University Professors (AAUP) v. Rubio
Decision Date: April 29, 2025
A United States District Court allowed key claims to proceed in a lawsuit brought by associations representing academic professionals challenging a federal policy allegedly designed to identify, punish, and deport non-citizen students and academics for expressing pro-Palestinian or “anti-Israel” views. The plaintiffs argued that following campus protests related to the war in Gaza, senior federal officials launched an enforcement regime that identified speech critical of Israel and subjected flagged individuals to arrest, visa revocation, and deportation. The Court rejected the Government’s argument that immigration law barred judicial review, holding that the plaintiffs were not challenging individual deportation orders but a broader, ideologically motivated policy, and found that both associational and organizational standing were satisfied based on the objectively reasonable chilling effect on non-citizen members and demonstrable harm to the organizations’ scholarly mission. The Court held that the plaintiffs had plausibly alleged a content- and viewpoint-based campaign of censorship in violation of the First Amendment and a reviewable final agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, given the concrete legal consequences flowing from the alleged policy.

Associated Press v. Budowich
Decision Date: April 8, 2025
A U.S. District Court granted a preliminary injunction against the government’s decision to bar a major news organization from select White House media events. The new organization had been excluded from press pool availabilities and limited-access briefings after it refused to revise its Stylebook to replace references to the “Gulf of Mexico” with the administration’s preferred term, the “Gulf of America.” The Court held that once the government opens restricted spaces to certain journalists it may not exclude others based on viewpoint, and that the news organization’s exclusion amounted to both impermissible viewpoint discrimination and unlawful retaliation under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Noting that nonpublic forums such as the Oval Office and press briefing rooms require reasonable, viewpoint-neutral access, the Court found that the news organization was likely to succeed on the merits and would suffer irreparable harm without relief. Accordingly, it ordered the government to restore the news organization’s access immediately and kept the injunction in place until further order of the Court.

JUNE 2: The Digital Prior Restraint – Can Freedom of Expression Survive Upload Filters? Örebro University in Sweden, the Robotics & AI Law Society (RAILS), and the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS) are inviting you to join an upcoming webinar on automated upload filters and their impact on free speech in Europe. The speakers will discuss the relevant EU secondary legislation and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the procedural and institutional protections necessary to help tackle overreach. The panel will welcome Emmanuel Vargas Penagos, PhD researcher in AI and Law at Örebro University, and Joan Barata Mir, Senior Legal Fellow at The Future of Free Speech, among others. June 2, 2025. 9:00-10:30 AM ET / 3:00-4:30 PM CET. Online. Register here.

● US: Students Reprimanded for Pro-Palestine Speech and Protest Coverage. Writing for Index on Censorship last Friday, Mackenzie Argent spotlighted two US student graduation speakers who gave pro-Palestinian addresses and faced repercussions from their universities. Logan Rozos, an undergraduate at New York University (NYU), condemned the war in Gaza on stage; NYU withheld Logan’s diploma and accused him of lying about his intention for the speech. At the George Washington University (GWU) graduation ceremony, student Cecilia Culver criticized GWU’s refusal to disclose its ties to – and divest from – Israel; GWU banned Cecilia from accessing campus. In a separate case concerning press freedom, Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) wrote on Columbia University’s investigations of student journalists who reported on campus protests: “It sets a really bad precedent, and will dissuade student journalists from covering if they know that their ability to report won’t be without the risk of being suspended or placed under investigation,” one of the student journalists told CJR.

● Argentina: New Police Crackdown at Retiree Protest; Milei Severs Right to Strike via Decree. Buenos Aires Herald reports on Argentine authorities’ further crackdown on the right to protest. Last week, during a regular rally of retirees demanding better pensions in front of the National Congress in Buenos Aires, security forces used tear gas, arrested four, and injured more than 80, including a photojournalist. That same day, in his third attempt to target people’s right to strike or piquet, President Javier Milei issued a decree designating more professions as “essential” and thus obliging more workers to be present at their workplaces (at 75% of the staff as a minimum) even during strikes. In its 2024 Annual Report published this month, the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights “recorded an accelerated deterioration of the environment for the exercise of freedom of expression in Argentina, characterized by the low tolerance of the Executive Branch towards criticism and deliberative processes.”

● Uganda: OHCHR on Bill Allowing Trials of Civilians in Military Courts; HRW on Widespread Abuse of LGBT People. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk calls on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to reject the bill allowing military courts to try civilians. Citing the Ugandan Supreme Court’s decision declaring such jurisdiction transfer unconstitutional this January, Türk’s statement underscored, “The trial of civilians by military courts is in principle incompatible with international human rights law […].” In other news on Uganda: two years after the Anti-Homosexuality Act became law in the country, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released They’re Putting Our Lives at Risk’: How Uganda’s Anti-LGBT Climate Unleashes Abuse, a report that documents the Ugandan authorities’ large-scale discrimination and violence targeting the LGBT people. HRW also shows how the country’s officials suspended human rights NGOs and engaged in spreading misinformation and hate speech against the LGBT people, contributing to omnipresent impunity for attacks.

This section of the newsletter features teaching materials focused on global freedom of expression which are newly uploaded on Freedom of Expression Without Frontiers

● Shifting Winds: Students Under Fire, 2020-2024. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released a new report on students and student groups punished or investigated by American college and university administrators between 2020 and 2024 for speech protected by the First Amendment. FIRE recorded 1,014 attempts to suppress expression on campus, 63% of which led to administrative sanctions. The report highlights two distinct periods prompted by racial justice protests following George Floyd’s death and by the war in Gaza following Hamas’ attack on Israel: 1) in 2020-22, “most students and student groups were targeted by their peers, for speech about race, and from their left”; 2) in 2023-24, “most were targeted by administrators, for speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and from their right.” FIRE also launched an interactive database listing all the cases that informed the report.

● FOPEA Report 2024: The Siege of Journalism Weakens Democracy. Published in Argentina by FOPEA (the Argentine Journalism Forum) in Spanish in early May, the report focuses on 2024, highlighting that political power in Argentina was responsible for 52% of the attacks on the press that year. It also shows that attacks on journalism increased by 53% compared to the previous year, mainly driven by political actors and President Javier Milei, with a strong impact in the digital sphere. The most common types of attacks were stigmatizing speech (45,25%), physical assaults (25,14%), and restrictions on access to information (11,73%). In terms of victims by media type, the report recorded attacks on TV journalists (73), radio journalists (47), media organizations (30), digital outlets (25), and newspapers (23).

● The Death Knell for American Free Speech Tradition, by Eliza Bechtold. Writing for Verfassungsblog, Eliza Bechtold, Programmes Manager and Research Fellow at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, University of Oxford, argues that the Trump administration’s targeting of lawful expression in support of Palestine makes “a brazen repudiation of longstanding American free speech tradition.” Bechtold unpacks the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the first Columbia affiliate arrested for deportation earlier this spring, and outlines the American approach to free speech based on the case law of the US Supreme Court. Against the backdrop of the latter, Bechtold shows how “fundamentally contradictory to the basic tenets of one of the most cherished American constitutional rights” Khalil’s case is.

● Speech-Related Conditions on Federal Funding in the University Context, by Frederick P. Schaffer. In this blog post published by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Frederick P. Schaffer, former General Counsel and Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs of The City University of New York, analyzes how the US Supreme Court’s doctrine could play out in the cases on academic freedom and federal funding. Citing Rust v. Sullivan, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, and Keyishian v. Board of Regents, Schaffer makes a hopeful argument: “[W]hatever the government might be empowered to do in other contexts, it may not impose funding conditions on colleges and universities so as to make them mouthpieces of the state.”

This newsletter is reproduced with the permission of Global Freedom of Expression.  For an archive of previous newsletters, see here.