Social Media Researchers Sue US Government for Barring Visa for Them

A group of technology researchers filed a lawsuit on Monday alleging that ​US President Donald Trump's administration has adopted an unconstitutional policy that targets foreign nationals who study ‌disinformation and hate speech on social media for visa denials and deportation.

The San Francisco-based Coalition for Independent Technology Research in a lawsuit, opens new tab filed in federal court in Washington argues that the administration's policy unlawfully chills the work of non-citizen researchers in the United ​States.

The group said the US State Department, while claiming it is fighting online censorship that Trump's ​allies have argued has affected conservative speech on social media, is engaged in a "brazen ⁠and far-reaching campaign of censorship" targeting researchers and anti-disinformation advocates.

The lawsuit asks a judge to block the policy ​on the grounds that it violates the US Constitution's First Amendment protections for free speech, Fifth Amendment promise ​of due process as well as requirements under a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act.

"The Trump administration is using the threat of detention and deportation to suppress speech it disfavors," Carrie DeCell, a lawyer for the coalition at the Knight First ​Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in a statement.

A State Department spokesperson said in a statement that the ​United States “is under no obligation to admit or suffer the presence of individuals who subvert our laws and deny our ‌citizens their ⁠constitutional rights.”

The administration has made free speech, particularly what it sees as the stifling of conservative voices online, a focus of its foreign policy, including in Brazil and in Europe.

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a visa ban on foreign nationals "complicit in censoring Americans." Rubio said some foreign officials have engaged in “flagrant censorship ​actions against US tech ​companies and US citizens and ⁠residents when they have no authority to do so.”

In December, the State Department imposed visa bans on five Europeans, including a former European Union commissioner and anti-disinformation activists ​who Rubio called “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex.”

The department did so after ​EU tech regulators ⁠that month fined Elon Musk's social media company X 120 million euros ($140 million) in the first sanction imposed under the EU's landmark Digital Services Act, which is intended to combat hateful speech, misinformation and disinformation.

Among the five hit by ⁠the visa ​ban were Imran Ahmed, the British CEO of the US-based Center ​for Countering Digital Hate, and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index. Their groups are members of the Coalition for Independent ​Technology Research, the lawsuit said.

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