The Trump administration is defending its right to ban content moderation experts from the United States

The Trump administration is fighting for the right to ban some social media moderation advocates from the United States.

U.S. District Judge James Bosberg on Wednesday heard arguments in a lawsuit between the nonprofit Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR), Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump administration officials. The lawsuit relates to policy It allows visa restrictions for foreign officials who “require U.S. technology platforms to adopt global content moderation policies.” CITR requested a preliminary injunction blocking the policy, which the State Department did It has already been mentioned When it imposed sanctions on five people working on online disinformation cases, including the former European official who led the implementation of digital services rules. She says allowing the policy to continue will silence people researching topics like content moderation and misinformation online.

The politics were involved Announced in May last yearAnd the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sanctions issued In December, it said its goals were “advanced surveillance campaigns by foreign countries.” The group included former EU official Thierry Breton, and executives from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), both members of CITR. CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed, who was the target of the sanctions, is a legal permanent resident of the United States, according to CITR.

CITR says this policy harms scientists’ ability to speak and publish freely. in Statements To courtresearchers described refraining from discussing the work publicly, as they feared it would threaten their visa status, or delaying the publication of certain research prior to international travel. “One of the worst parts about the chilling effect is all the research that won’t happen,” Brandi Jurkink, executive director of CITR, said in a news conference after the hearing.

The government’s defense depends largely on reading politics in a very narrow way. Lawyer Zach Lindsay said the law only targets the behavior of people who work for foreign governments, so independent researchers have nothing to fear. Carrie DeSelle, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute arguing on behalf of CITR, emphasized that there was no evidence that figures like Ahmed were coordinating with a foreign government. If the policy is being implemented outside its supposed parameters, Boasberg asked Lindsay: “Wouldn’t that blow up your argument?” Lindsay insisted to Ahmed It wasn’t Ahmed was actually targeted under the policy, though Rubio referred to him in a memo advising Ahmed’s deportation — and said the details of any particular target do not undermine the State Department’s larger authority.

Overall, Lindsey left ambiguous about what exactly constitutes working with a foreign government — an ambiguity that, Deselle said, “seems to be part of the point.” The State Department seeks to preserve an expanded right to restrict visas, regardless of the details of a particular policy.

An injunction could partly hinge on technical questions such as whether CITR has grounds to bring a lawsuit. But Boasberg questioned another key claim of the government: that a court can only decide whether the policy is constitutional in the context of the legal challenge of an individual visa holder facing deportation. “No matter how preposterous the policy deployed, there can be no constitutional challenge?” Asked as default. It will soon be decided whether the policy should be discontinued to prevent irreparable damage. “I will do my best to solve the problem,” Boasberg said.