Judge Excoriates Trump in Blistering Decision Calling Efforts to Deport Pro-Palestinian Academics Illegal

The Reagan-appointed judge decried Trump’s “great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.”

By Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein

Politico

09/30/2025 04:16 PM EDT

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration’s effort to deport pro-Palestinian academics is a deliberate attack on free speech meant to “strike fear” into non-citizen students and chill campus protests.

“The effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day,” U.S. District Judge William Young concluded, in a scathing, 161-page opinion that he described as the most crucial he’s delivered in his 30 years on the bench.

Young, a Reagan appointee based in Boston, did not immediately order changes to administration policies, but said he will hold further proceedings on how to rein in the practices he found to violate First Amendment free-speech rights.

The ruling is the long-awaited result of a lawsuit brought by university professors who say the Trump administration is illegally chilling free speech by targeting prominent pro-Palestinian campus activists — like Mahmoud Khalil — and others who have expressed pro-Palestinian views. It followed a two week trial that featured testimony from top Trump administration officials, who described orchestrating the arrests of these activists and taking cues from an anonymously run website.

Perhaps more remarkable than the blistering ruling is Young’s assessment of President Donald Trump himself, condemning him as a bully who “ignores everything,” engages in “hollow bragging” and uses his power and gifts of communication to strip away constitutional rights.

“The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech,” Young wrote, describing the courts as the most crucial bulwark to this threat.

“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected,” Young added. “Is he correct?”

The White House denounced the decision as “an outrageous ruling that hampers the safety and security of our nation.”

“Studying in the United States is a privilege that the Trump Administration will not allow to foreign nationals who endanger America’s national security or imperil campus safety,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston wrote.

Young has repeatedly tangled with the administration over policies he has described as discriminatory, one of a handful of old-guard Reagan-era judges to sound off about Trump’s approach to governing.

In August, two members of the Supreme Court — Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — rebuked Young for blocking the Trump administration’s decisions to cut off medical research grants it deemed related to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The two Trump appointees said recent rulings on other grant-related cases on the high court’s emergency docket made clear Young’s ruling was impermissible.

“When this Court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts,” Gorsuch wrote, joined by Kavanaugh.

Young later apologized, saying it wasn’t his intention to defy the Supreme Court, and he was simply unaware that the justices considered their emergency-docket rulings to be precedents lower courts are bound to follow.