Known firebrand leftist Ronald Reagan stacked the courts with woke activist judges who keep blocking Donald Trump’s glorious agenda! First, Judge John Coughenour blocks the executive order erasing the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship guarantee as if some “Constitution” constrains presidential action. Now, Judge William Young of the District of Massachusetts unleashes a massive excoriation of the Trump administration’s effort to use immigration law to attack campus free speech.

Meanwhile, somewhere out there, the Democratic Party’s elected leaders considered sending Trump a polite letter of concern.

Judge Young’s 161-page decision ripped the administration for flexing immigration laws to abduct and threaten to deport individuals legally within the United States based on pro-Palestinian statements. The sweeping opinion comes after a bench trial conducted to determine if the administration acted to unconstitutionally chill the free speech rights of non-citizen members of plaintiff educational associations. Judge Young doesn’t waste much time getting to the crux of it:

This case -– perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court –- squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.” “No law” means “no law.” The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence. See Section III.A infra. No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike.

Armed with this established principle of law, Judge Young determined that officials up and down the administration acted “deliberately and with purposeful aforethought” to chill First Amendment rights.

Judge Young received some flak online for his decision to open the opinion with an anonymous postcard he received:

We finally have a rhetorical successor to “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” and, appropriate to the 2025 America milieu, it’s an anonymous postcard in all caps, haphazardly hand-scrawled by a lunatic.

Critics chided the judge for using this as a framing device. We’re the first to criticize judges for getting cute when holding someone’s life or livelihood in the balance. When a judge decides to go off with a bunch of puns while denying a stay of execution, that’s wildly inappropriate. That’s not really the case here. If anything, Judge Young is doing his part to bring more attention to the elevated threat level faced by federal judges face in light of the feckless Supreme Court. The White House has used the Supreme Court’s unwillingness to explain its rubberstamping of the administration as a jumping off point to whip Trump’s followers into threatening any court that might invoke existing precedent to place brakes on executive action.

America has always had cranks, but the volume of cranks preemptively mouthing off to judges in cases that don’t even involve them is a new phenomenon. Judges don’t have a lot of opportunities to share what’s going on behind the scenes on a stage as impactful as a written opinion. It is, paradoxically, why the conservatives on the Supreme Court are so adamant about not writing them.

A footnote in the opinion directly addresses the impact the shadow docket’s “governance via Post-It note” approach has in emboldening the administration’s lawlessness:

The flurry of activity on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket is itself a tacit admission that, when dealing with an administration that is admittedly seeking to “flood the zone,” it needs to intervene to correct rulings that, if not immediately remedied, will remain in effect far too long.

He leaves open to the reader to work out how the shadow docket is being used instead to guarantee incorrect ruling remain in effect far too long.

Judge Young does not take lightly the privilege he enjoys to enter his opinions into the unbroken line of American jurisprudence. To that end, he goes beyond the mere abuse of the Immigration and Nationality Act — which he notes is unprecedented in its unconstitutional gall — to call out the tactics that the administration adopts to add to the sense of terror they can impose in the name of squelching speech:

And there’s the issue of masks. This Court has listened carefully to the reasons given by Öztürk’s captors for masking-up and has heard the same reasons advanced by the defendant Todd Lyons, Acting Director of ICE. It rejects this testimony as disingenuous, squalid and dishonorable. ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence. Small wonder ICE often seems to need our respected military to guard them as they go about implementing our immigration laws. It should be noted that our troops do not ordinarily wear masks. Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor — and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it. “We can not escape history,” Lincoln righty said. “[It] will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.” Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress (Dec. 1, 1862).

For those keeping score, this is a Republican-appointed judge comparing the Republican administration to the Ku Klux Klan. Remember this when the White House inevitably blasts this as a partisan opinion.

Speaking of partisanship, aside from Judge Young being, in fact, a Republican, some critics did scold the judge for not appearing appropriately neutral. This is gaslighting. Judges shouldn’t exhibit bias — something the Supreme Court’s current majority consistently refuses to consider — but that’s not the same thing as betraying a point of view. An opinion about politicians making a political decision to abuse their role of public servants to squelch political speech will always sound in politics.

Without condemning the actions of these politicians, the extent of the viewpoint discrimination on display takes on a “view from nowhere” quality. It becomes the sort of sterile artifact casually tossed in the dustbin of history rather than standing as an ongoing touchstone in constitutional jurisprudence. To borrow from another old Republican who would be loudly protesting this administration, “extremism in calling out constitutional violations is no vice.”

Vague demands of “neutrality” are an act of sentiment policing pitched over Chick-fil-A in the Federalist Society writers’ room to help mute the severity of constitutional violations. It’s cheap, bothsiderism rhetoric designed to normalize authoritarian creep by scolding everyone who dares describe it as anything but politics as usual. It’s a strategy that’s enjoyed undue success:

Behold President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech -– law firms cower,⁵³ institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the President,⁵⁴ media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism.⁵⁵

53 But not all of them. See infra.
54 But not all of them. See infra.
55 But not all of them. See infra.

We’ve talked a lot about the cowering ones. The most important thing to remember though is that it’s not just the Nefarious Nine firms who struck deals with Trump. Firms across the industry took steps to avoid Trump’s ire entirely, quietly deleting hiring initiatives, firing HR staff who worked on anti-discrimination efforts, and eschewing social justice pro bono work. It is, “not all of them,” but it’s a lot of them.

Unfortunately, the judge seems to feel a little less than enthusiastic about the rule of law right now.

In the golden age of our democracy, this opinion might end here. After all, the facts prove that the President himself approves truly scandalous and unconstitutional suppression of free speech on the part of two of his senior cabinet secretaries. One would imagine that the corrective would follow as a matter of course from the appropriate authorities. Yet nothing will happen. The Department of Justice represents [] the President, and Congress is occupied with other weighty matters.

By “other weighty matters,” he means “covering up the Epstein files.”

The 161-page missive ends on an ominous note:

Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.

President Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address as Governor of the State of California (January 5, 1967).

I first heard these words of President Reagan’s back in 2007 when my son quoted them in the Law Day celebration speech at the Norfolk Superior Court. I was deeply moved and hold these words before me as a I discharge judicial duties. As I’ve read and re-read the record in this case, listened widely, and reflected extensively, I’ve come to believe that President Trump truly understands and appreciates the full import of President Reagan’s inspiring message –- yet I fear he has drawn from it a darker, more cynical message. 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.

Is he correct?

Probably.

(Read the full opinion on the next page…)

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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