The Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors’s lawsuit against the federal government’s immigration policies will move forward despite the Trump administration’s motion to dismissa federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
The suit, which accuses the Trump administration of violating its members’ First Amendment rights by arresting and attempting to deport noncitizens for expressing pro-Palestine views, will now advance to a status conference in May after a favorable ruling by Judge William G. Young ’62.
“We think that the legal violations have such huge implications for noncitizens and citizens at universities across the country that we’re very hopeful that the urgency of this case can be addressed,” said Veena Dubal, general counsel for the national AAUP.
Young’s ruling will allow claims under both the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act to move forward — two central pillars of the AAUP’s original complaint filed in late March.
The AAUP alleged in the original complaint that the Trump administration’s “ideological-deportation policy” targeted noncitizen students and faculty “on the basis of, or in retaliation for, their political viewpoints,” violating their rights to free speech and assembly.
In the opposition filed two weeks ago, lawyers for the Trump administration urged the judge to dismiss this claim because “ideological-deportation” is not a written policy.
But in the Tuesday filing, Young allowed the AAUP’s First Amendment claims to move forward, ruling that the AAUP “plausibly alleged the existence of both an ideological-deportation policy targeting protected political speech and a more informal campaign of censorship through threats.”
The ruling comes after the Trump administration restored more than 4,700 student visas — including for 12 Harvard students and recent alumni — backpedaling a previous crackdown on international students across the country.
The AAUP also argued in the original lawsuit that the administration’s immigration enforcement violated the APA, citing the Trump administration’s “abuse of discretion.”
The APA governs how federal agencies propose and implement regulations and prohibits federal actions that exceed statutory authority. For the administration’s actions to be reviewable under the APA, there must be no other way to address the alleged harm.
The Trump administration urged the judge to dismiss these claims, arguing that deportations “are not reviewable under the APA at all” because they can be challenged in immigration court.
Still, Young sustained the AAUP’s claims because they “plausibly argued that their harms are not otherwise redressable than through the APA.”
Despite upholding the majority of the AAUP’s argument, Young dismissed the claims under the Fifth Amendment — which guarantees the right to due process — noting that violations typically only apply to written policies.
The AAUP originally alleged that the Trump administration’s policies violated the Fifth Amendment — arguing that the enforcement of the “ideological-deportation policy” was too vague and violates due process by inviting “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.”
The Trump administration argued that the AAUP’s claims were “baseless” in their opposition two weeks ago.
“For starters, a set of plaintiffs cannot independently stitch together and define a perceived ‘policy,’ and then fault the Government for its terms being too vague,” lawyers for the federal government wrote.
But with the majority of their suit moving forward, the AAUP remains optimistic about the strength of their remaining claims.
“The most important claim here, the First Amendment claim, stands and we’ll know in early May whether we’ll go to trial,” Dubal said.
“But we’ve survived the motion to dismiss, which means that we have a colorable case,” she added.
—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart.
