Judge Rejects Nationwide Relief in AAUP, MESA Lawsuit Over Noncitizen Speech, Issues Narrower Protections

A federal judge rebuffed a Harvard faculty group’s request to extend speech protections to noncitizens nationwide after it won a lawsuit against the Trump administration — instead issuing a special remedy that would void adverse alterations in immigration status for members of the suing parties if they brought forth complaints.

The mandate concludes a lawsuit filed last year by the Middle East Studies Association, the American Association of University Professors, and several chapters of the AAUP — including Harvard’s — arguing that the Trump administration had used immigration policy to intimidate noncitizens for their speech.

In the Thursday order, U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young ’62 declared that only noncitizens who were members of the AAUP and MESA through the lawsuit’s conclusion in September would be protected by the remedy, rejecting the plaintiffs’ October request to broaden the protections.

But Young said that any adverse alterations to their immigration status would be assumed to be in retaliation for them exercising First Amendment rights outside a few key exceptions, and any deportations would be stayed, as long as the member filed a complaint.

Young also issued an order on Thursday unsealing records that several news organizations, including The Boston Globe and The New York Times, had requested to understand how the court had reached its final decision.

The records include a Jan. 7, 2025 email sent to then-Harvard Philosophy department chair Bernhard Nickel — who testified in the trial in July — from a person, whose name was redacted, saying they had received briefings from the University, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the College as early as November 2024 on potential responses to new immigration policies.

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the purported November plans.

In the final order, Young — who had previously voiced uncertainty about the effectiveness of court remedies in the case — reiterated his findings that the White House’s threats to issue detainments, deportations, and visa changes based on political speech had “chilled” noncitizens’ speech.

He added that the government could alter the immigration status of qualifying members of the AAUP or MESA who brought complaints only if they proved one of three tenets “by clear and convincing evidence:” that the member’s immigration status expired by its own terms, the member was convicted of any crime requiring a trial by jury after Sept. 30, 2025, or there was an “appropriate” reason under immigration law that the status should be altered.

Young outlined his plan during a Jan. 15 hearing, but in a Jan. 20 court filing, the AAUP doubled down on its November request to extend relief from the lawsuit to noncitizens nationwide.

They argued that under the court’s proposal, as discussed in the hearing, the government could still arrest and detain noncitizens for their speech because there would be no order prohibiting them from doing so — and relief “would be uncertain and come too late to remedy their chill.”

Even if qualifying noncitizens were to seek relief in court, they added, “they would almost certainly languish in a detention facility for weeks, if not months, while the court considered threshold arguments about whether and how to apply this Court’s declaration.”

In the same filing, lawyers for the AAUP added that if the court were to confine protections to AAUP and MESA, it should be extended to all current and future organizers — not just those who were members on or after the suit was filed and through the Sept. 30 decision.

But at the hearing, Young had appeared skeptical of the measure. Drawing an analogy to a class-action lawsuit, he said people could not become members of a class once the group has won the lawsuit.

Kirsten A. Weld, president of Harvard’s AAUP chapter, wrote in a statement after the final remedy that the court had “issued a historic ruling striking down as unconstitutional a nakedly authoritarian campaign to suppress speech on college campuses.”

“Our chapter sued to protect the rights of everyone on our campus to speak their mind, even when their speech is unpopular,” she wrote. “We will never stop standing up for our community.”

The federal government has until late March to appeal.

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein and Signal at abbysg.97.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @amannmahajan and Signal at amannsm.38.