GoKawiilStill, the exact implications of Rubio’s announcement are unclear—purposefully so, argues Carrie DeCell, a lawyer representing the researchers. “This policy is expansive and incredibly vague, and the chilling effects are correspondingly enormous,” DeCell said outside the courthouse in Washington, DC, on May 13.
The case has been brought by the Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR), an advocacy organization for tech researchers. It is suing Rubio, former US secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem, and former US attorney general Pam Bondi and asking the court to strike down the policy as unconstitutional. In their complaint, the plaintiffs say the policy violates the speech and due process rights of foreign-born tech researchers and workers whose “work supports greater moderation of content on the [tech] platforms."
CITR is represented by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute and the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy. DeCell, a senior staff attorney at the Knight Institute, tells MIT Technology Review that they’re in court because the Trump administration is effectively “using immigration law to punish people for expressing views that it disagrees with.”
This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s “America Undone” series, examining how the foundations of US success in science and innovation are currently under threat. You can read the rest here.
Most immediately, the plaintiffs are asking the government to halt these visa restrictions while the case proceeds. Zachariah Lindsey, the assistant US attorney representing Rubio and the other defendants, argued in last week’s hearing that the government is not targeting speech but, rather, “conduct [that] is assisting or facilitating foreign government censorship of free speech.” At the end of the week, the government filed a motion to dismiss the case.
The judge has yet to rule on either motion, and his questions so far appeared to focus on parsing what (and who) is actually affected by the State Department’s announcements, as well as other procedural issues.
The outcome of the case may ultimately affect how much the public knows about the risks of social media and AI, says Nicole Schneidman, head of Protect Democracy’s technology and data governance team. The workers bringing this suit, she says, “serve a really, really important function in educating the public, holding tech companies accountable, doing research on the ramifications that advanced technology has on our society.”