WASHINGTON—A federal court of appeals ruled today that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) is not violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by failing to affirmatively disclose legal opinions that are binding on the executive branch, including those that resolve inter-agency disputes, adjudicate private rights, and interpret non-discretionary legal duties. The case, litigated by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of the Campaign ...| Knight First Amendment Institute
NEW YORK—According to news reports and a public announcement by the State Department, the Trump administration has revoked the visas of at least six people who publicly commented on the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on social media. The revocations followed earlier warnings from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that visa holders “celebrating” Kirk’s death should “prepare to be deported.” The following can be attributed to Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney an...| Knight First Amendment Institute
Introduction On October 1, 2025, the U.S. Secretary of Education asked nine institutions, including six private schools (Brown University, Dartmouth, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Pennsylvania (Penn), University of Southern California (USC), and Vanderbilt University) and three state universities (the Universities of Arizona, Texas, and Virginia), to join a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”1. U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to Ni...| Knight First Amendment Institute
WASHINGTON—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today filed an amicus brief in a case brought by the Associated Press (AP) challenging the Trump administration’s decision to exclude its reporters from White House press pool briefings. The Institute argues that the ban is an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech, and that the press pool is a protected First Amendment public forum that serves an essential and unique role in our democracy. “The White...| Knight First Amendment Institute
Last week, the Knight Institute joined more than 70 First Amendment scholars, litigators, and civil society organizations to send a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, condemning his recent attacks on ABC-affiliated broadcast licensees and recent suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s program following comments Kimmel made about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The letter argues that Carr’s actions amount to “jawboning” and are “the latest in a pattern of escalat...| Knight First Amendment Institute
NEW YORK—In a strong decision protecting the First Amendment rights of American human rights organizations and journalists, a federal magistrate judge yesterday rejected an attempt by a previously sanctioned Israeli settler to compel discovery from DAWN about their work documenting his role in human rights abuses in the West Bank.| Knight First Amendment Institute
Press freedom, already under threat from technological and economic disruptions and eroding public trust, has become even more vulnerable in President Trump’s second term. Lawsuits aimed at silencing critical journalism and punitive measures against press outlets perceived as anti-Trump are accompanied by a daily drumbeat of vitriol against the media from top public officials. On November 5, 2025, a panel of legal experts and journalists will consider how to protect the crucial role of th...| Knight First Amendment Institute
For well over a century, the border has been a legal black hole that enables the U.S. government to exclude non-citizens from entering the country—even for reasons that are discriminatory with respect to race, religion, or viewpoint. In 1892, the Supreme Court declared that, for non-citizens who have not been admitted to the United States, “the decisions of executive or administrative officers, acting within powers expressly conferred by Congress, are due process of law.”1. Nishimura Ek...| Knight First Amendment Institute
NEW YORK—In recent weeks, there have been multiple reports of law enforcement officers intimidating, arresting, and detaining members of the press who were documenting ICE activities and reporting on protests in solidarity with immigrants. The following can be attributed to Katy Glenn Bass, research director at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Reports of ICE agents intimidating and arresting journalists at public protests are deeply alarming. The press is vital to the protection o...| Knight First Amendment Institute
On February 24, 2025, the Knight Institute filed a motion to intervene asking Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over the now-abandoned prosecution of President Trump under the Espionage Act, to release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report about Trump’s mishandling of classified information at Mar-a-Lago. The public has an extraordinary interest in the report, which concerns allegations of grave criminal conduct by the nation’s highest-ranking official. The report’s release would shed l...| Knight First Amendment Institute
ATLANTA—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today filed a petition asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to compel a lower court to rule on a motion that the Institute filed more than six months ago, seeking the release of a Special Counsel report on President Trump’s alleged unlawful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left office in 2021. “The court’s months-long delay in ruling on our motion for the release of the S...| Knight First Amendment Institute
BOSTON—Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts today ruled that the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting noncitizen students and faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the First Amendment. The ruling comes after a two-week trial in the case brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, partnering with Sher Tremonte LLP, on behalf of the American Association of Univers...| Knight First Amendment Institute
NEW YORK—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University announced today that Madhav Khosla, B.R. Ambedkar Professor of Indian Constitutional Law at Columbia Law School, will join the Institute as Senior Fellow for the next two years. Khosla’s work with the Institute will focus on the role of the legal profession in an era of rising authoritarianism. “We’ve long admired Professor Khosla’s work and are thrilled to have this opportunity to work with him on this urgent pr...| Knight First Amendment Institute
The fear that terrorist organizations will exploit the reach and affordances of social media platforms to spread propaganda, incite violence, and recruit followers was one of the first—and remains one of the most intense—anxieties about the harms caused by the internet. 1. Jillian C. York, Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism 100–113 (2021) (reviewing the pressure on tech companies to remove terrorist content from 2008 onwards). For years, both politic...| Knight First Amendment Institute
September 9, 2025| Knight First Amendment Institute
NEW YORK—Last night, hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, threatened to take action against the ABC television network because of remarks made by Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night show, the network announced it was “indefinitely” suspending the program. In his opening monologue on Monday, Kimmel had commented on the murder of Charlie Kirk. The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute...| Knight First Amendment Institute
PHILADELPHIA—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today filed an amicus brief in Khalil v. Trump, urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to find that the government’s detention and attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil on the basis of his protected speech is unconstitutional. The brief draws on the testimony of government officials during the recent trial in AAUP v. Rubio, a case brought by the Knight Institute challenging the Trump administration...| Knight First Amendment Institute
On September 17, 2025, the Knight Institute filed an amicus brief in Khalil v. Trump, a case challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful detention and attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil for his pro-Palestinian speech. The district court granted Mr. Khalil’s motion for a preliminary injunction, finding that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination that Mr. Khalil was deportable under the foreign policy ground was likely unconstitutionally vague, and ordered Mr. Khalil’s ...| Knight First Amendment Institute
NEW YORK—President Trump late last night filed a lawsuit against The New York Times and Penguin Random House seeking $15 billion, alleging defamation and accusing the news outlet of being a “virtual mouthpiece” for the Democratic Party. The following can be attributed to Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times and Penguin Random House is his latest attempt to weaponize defa...| Knight First Amendment Institute
LOS ANGELES — Free speech organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief today in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Newsom v. Trump, California’s lawsuit challenging President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and active-duty Marines earlier this summer in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. This brief comes less than one week after the district court judge in the case found that the military’s activities in L.A. violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally for...| Knight First Amendment Institute
I. Introduction| Knight First Amendment Institute
August 29, 2025| Knight First Amendment Institute
Aryeh Neier was the national director of the ACLU in 1977 when American Nazis demanded the right to march through Skokie, Illinois—a town with a large population of Holocaust survivors. Neier was himself a Holocaust survivor and found the Nazis’ ideology repugnant, but the ACLU nonetheless took on the group’s case and argued, successfully, that the First Amendment required that they be permitted to march. The intensely controversial case cost the ACLU thousands of members but became emb...| Knight First Amendment Institute
We articulate a vision of artificial intelligence (AI) as normal technology. To view AI as normal is not to understate its impact—even transformative, general-purpose technologies such as electricity and the internet are “normal” in our conception. But it is in contrast to both utopian and dystopian visions of the future of AI which have a common tendency to treat it akin to a separate species, a highly autonomous, potentially superintelligent entity. 1. Nick Bostrom. 2012. The superint...| Knight First Amendment Institute
