It’s still early in President Donald Trump’s second term, but federal judges have already issued rulings in all sorts of cases sounding the alarm on his administration’s various assaults on the rule of law. A new ruling may stand out atop the list, not just for what it says but how it says it.
The context is a ruling Tuesday from U.S. District Judge William Young, a Reagan appointee, against the administration’s targeting of noncitizen pro-Palestinians for exercising their free speech.
Even when confined to the legal issue on which the judge ruled, the decision is remarkable. But Young takes a much bigger swing in the 161-page opinion, seeking to capture the moment in both form and content.
The GOP appointee framed his opinion as a response to an anonymous postcard he received. Before the opinion technically begins, Young seems to have reproduced the handwritten text of the postcard, dated June 19, which said, “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS…..WHAT DO YOU HAVE?”
Young replied:
The judge’s lengthy opinion followed.
In it, he concluded that the administration has targeted noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation “primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.” He wrote that officials did so “in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right.” He added that “the effect of these targeted deportation proceedings continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day.”
Then, in a section of his opinion he titled “JUSTICE IN THE TRUMP ERA,” the judge posed the question, “What now?” (Young bolded the question.)
Before concluding that he’ll answer the question of a remedy after he holds a hearing on the subject, Young surveyed the difficulties of holding this president and his administration legally accountable. The judge quoted his wife as saying of the president, “He seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead.” The judge wrote that her assessment “so perfectly captures the public persona of President Trump, especially as it pertains to the issues presented in this case.”
Young later invoked the words of the president who appointed him, Reagan, who called freedom “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.”
The judge wrote that he had come to believe that 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.” The judge wrote of his fear that 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.” Young concluded by wondering about the president, “Is he correct?” The judge then returned to the anonymous postcard writer to whom his opinion is addressed. He wrote, “I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for writing. It shows you care. You should.” The judge signed, “Sincerely & respectfully, Bill Young.” He then added a post-script: P.S. The next time you’re in Boston [the postmark on the card is from the Philadelphia area] stop in at the Courthouse and watch your fellow citizens, sitting as jurors, reach out for justice. It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive, for it is well said that ‘Where a jury sits, there burns the lamp of liberty.’ Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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