Tag: ban

  • Will Trump Try to Ban Immigrants from Public Schools? – The 74

    Will Trump Try to Ban Immigrants from Public Schools? – The 74


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    This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

    Funding cuts. Raids near campuses. Exclusion from programs like Head Start and career training. For months, the Trump administration has been chipping away at the rights of students without legal status in public schools.

    Could the administration take away those students’ right to free public school entirely? Experts say that may be the next step.

    “People have worried about this for a couple decades, but this is different,” said Patricia Gándara, education professor and co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “Right now we have to be extremely vigilant. These people will stop at nothing.”

    A 1982 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, guarantees all students, regardless of immigration status, the right to a free public education in K-12 schools. But last year the conservative Heritage Foundation called for the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling and for states to charge tuition to immigrant families, even if their children are U.S. citizens. The rationale is that schools spend billions of dollars educating those students — money that instead should be spent on students who, along with their parents, are native-born U.S. citizens.

    Project 2025, also published by the Heritage Foundation, echoes that vision.

    Such a policy would have an outsized impact in California, where nearly half of the state’s children have at least one immigrant parent, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

    “This would have tremendous negative impacts,” said Megan Hopkins, chair of the education department at UC San Diego. “For starters, we’d have a less educated, less literate populace, which would affect the economy and nearly every other aspect of life in California.”

    Tuition for noncitizens

    Plyler v. Doe stemmed from a case in Texas in the early 1980s. The state had passed a law allowing schools to charge tuition to students who weren’t citizens. The Tyler Independent School District in Tyler, Texas, a small city about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, was among the districts that tried, triggering a lawsuit that eventually brought the case to the Supreme Court.

    The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, arguing that children who aren’t citizens are entitled to equal protection under the law. Still, the ruling was close — 5 to 4 — even though the court was more liberal than it is today.

    Since then, the ruling has been mostly forgotten. But there have been occasional attempts to restrict immigrants in schools, in California and elsewhere. In 1994 California voters passed Proposition 187, which banned immigrants living illegally in the U.S. from receiving public benefits, including access to public schools. A federal court blocked it before it went into effect.

    In 2011, Alabama passed a law requiring schools to collect students’ immigration status. That law was later blocked by a federal court. In 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he’d favor revisiting Plyler v. Doe and that states should not have to pay to educate students without legal status.

    Since the Heritage Foundation published its report, about a half-dozen states have attempted to pass laws that would allow schools to charge tuition to noncitizens. None passed last year, but advocates said they plan to keep trying.

    Route to Supreme Court

    They’re likely to have a sympathetic supporter in President Donald Trump, who’s so far followed many of the policies put forward by Project 2025. In the past few months, his administration has amped up immigration arrests and said it would no longer honor schools as safe havens from enforcement. It also cut (although later reinstated after states sued) funding for migrant students and barred students without legal status from Head Start, adult education and career and technical education.

    The issue could land before the Supreme Court in at least two ways. A state could pass a law allowing public schools to charge tuition, leading to a lawsuit which could end up before the Supreme Court. Or Trump could issue an executive order that could also trigger a lawsuit.

    Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School, said some of Trump’s actions, such as barring children without legal status from Head Start, is already a violation of Plyler.

    “There’s no doubt that the Trump administration has increased pressure on Plyler,” Chemerinsky said. “Certainly, what Trump is doing could lead to cases that would get to the Supreme Court. Could this court overturn Plyler? Of course they could. … all it would take is five justices wanting to overrule it.”

    Even if it’s not overturned, the current policy shifts have had a chilling effect on schools and immigrant families, said Hopkins, at UC San Diego. School attendance has dropped in communities experiencing immigration crackdowns, which has caused academic repercussions for some students and widened the achievement gap between Latino students and other groups. A recent report by Policy Analysis for California Education found that Latino students and English learners fared worse in math and English in the wake of immigration arrests in their communities, and reported a significant increase in bullying at school.

    Hopkins also said the policies aren’t especially effective. If the goal is to encourage immigrants to return to their home countries voluntarily, research has shown that doesn’t often happen. After Alabama passed its anti-immigrant law in 2011, many families simply moved to Mississippi.

    ‘Our biggest fear’

    In Monterey County, the new policies have led to widespread fear and confusion among immigrant families, said Monterey County Office of Education Superintendent Deneen Guss. Attendance has dropped not only in schools, but at community events as well.

    To support families, schools have been hosting “Know Your Rights” information nights (in-person and virtually), encouraged parents to submit child care plans to schools in case a parent is arrested, given out booklets in Spanish on how to help children experiencing anxiety, and provided a wide array of legal and other resources.

    But when the Trump administration announced it was barring students without legal status from Head Start, “that gave me pause,” Guss said. “That made me think they really were going after Plyler. That’s our biggest fear.”

    She worries about the impact that would have on families, as well as school staff who would suddenly be responsible for checking students’ citizenship paperwork. Currently, schools don’t ask for students’ immigration status.

    “Educators’ jobs are hard enough,” Guss said. “Our job is to give children the best possible education. Don’t make us become immigration officers. It’s a position we do not want.”

    She’s been urging parents, and the public, to stay informed and speak out. Regardless of whether the Supreme Court overturns Plyler, anti-immigrant policies are almost certain to continue, with devastating consequences for students.

    “You can’t sit back and pretend everything is going to be OK,” Guss said. “People need to ensure their voices are heard. And we have to fight for our kids.”

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • FIRE statement on Iowa’s book ban

    FIRE statement on Iowa’s book ban

    On May 26, 2023, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law Senate File 496, which requires the removal of book depicting “sex acts” from school libraries and classrooms. A federal judge initially blocked the law, citing potential unconstitutional application and the removal of books with “undeniable political, artistic, literary, and/or scientific value.” However, an appeals court later overturned the block.

    The following statement is from FIRE attorney Greg Greubel.

    Last Friday, FIRE filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Penguin Random House LLC v. Robbins, a case challenging Iowa’s sweeping book ban law, SF496. The law, passed in May 2023, banned public schools from carrying any books that depict a “sex act,” which was broadly defined.

    Our brief urges the court to affirm the district court’s order blocking enforcement of the law, which has already forced school districts to purge hundreds of books from library shelves — including classics by George Orwell, Walt Whitman, and William Faulkner — simply because their works contain passages that fall under the law’s broad definition of a “sex act.” The law imposes harsh penalties on educators who fail to comply, threatening not only their jobs but also their professional licenses.

    FIRE argues that Iowa’s law ignores centuries of hard-won lessons about the value of free expression and the dangers of government censorship. We explain that public-school libraries are not instruments of government speech, but unique institutions that serve as repositories of knowledge and forums for intellectual exploration. Attempts to impose top-down, politically motivated control over their collections violate students’ First Amendment right to access information.

    FIRE is proud to stand in support of students, educators, and authors. The government should not have the power to dictate which ideas are permissible in school libraries — especially not through the blunt force of censorship.

    You can read our full amicus brief here.

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  • Judge pauses Mississippi’s DEI ban at public colleges and schools

    Judge pauses Mississippi’s DEI ban at public colleges and schools

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    Dive Brief: 

    • A federal judge on Sunday temporarily blocked enforcement of major parts of a new Mississippi law that bars diversity, equity and inclusion in the state’s public colleges and K-12 schools. 
    • The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi and other organizations filed a lawsuit in June on behalf of students and educators, arguing the new law imposes the state government’s views on race, gender and sexuality on public colleges and schools and censors opposing views. 
    • In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate pointed to accounts of educators having their programs shut down or censoring their own speech to ensure they don’t run afoul of the law. The accounts signal “possible widespread suppression of speech, programming, and institutional function,” Wingate wrote. 

    Dive Insight: 

    Educator and student groups sued over the law just two months after it took effect in April, arguing the legislation violates their First Amendment right to free speech and is unconstitutionally vague. 

    “It is difficult for administrators, teachers, and students to distinguish prohibited actions from permissible ones, making the law particularly susceptible to arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement,” the lawsuit said. 

    One contested aspect of the law is a provision that bans public colleges and K-12 schools from either engaging in or requiring diversity training, which it defines as any formal or informal education meant to increase “awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex, color, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or national origin.” 

    This edict applies to both elective or required courses, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs warn of dire consequences from the legislation, arguing its provisions would prohibit constitutional law professors from discussing discrimination and history teachers from teaching about the Civil War and slavery. 

    Under the bill, colleges and K-12 schools also can’t “engage in” eight “divisive concepts” — a provision the lawsuit calls “extremely broad.” One divisive concept, for instance, is that an individual “by virtue of his or her race, sex, color, national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.” 

    The lawsuit argues that could block discussions of implicit bias in sociology, psychology and other classes.

    Public colleges and K-12 schools that don’t follow the law face a steep penalty if they rack up two violations — the potential loss of state funding. Colleges and schools must “cure” their violations to avoid this punishment, though the legislation doesn’t explain how that can be accomplished, sparking concerns that educators will be fired and students will be expelled, according to the lawsuit. 

    The legislation also carves out exceptions for “scholarly research or creative work” by students and employees. But the lawsuit argues those carve-outs are unclear and raise questions about whether students could discuss work on one of the banned concepts during class. 

    “Like other provisions of the act, this exception is vague and further confuses what is and what is not prohibited by the law,” the plaintiffs argued. 

    The defendants include Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, as well as the chairs of the state community college system’s coordinating board and education board, among others. They filed a motion to dismiss earlier this month, arguing that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue and that the attorney general was shielded by sovereign immunity. 

    However, Wingate wrote that U.S. Supreme Court precedent allows plaintiffs to seek injunctive relief against state officials to prevent constitutional violations.

    The temporary restraining order is in effect until further court order. Wingate is holding a hearing Wednesday over whether to grant a preliminary injunction, which would last until he issues a final ruling on the case. 

    In his ruling, the judge pointed to accounts from educators and students. One plaintiff, a librarian at Hinds Community College, expressed uncertainty about whether she can recommend books on race, gender or identity or curate material for events like Black History Month. 

    And the director of student development at Tougaloo College said she has suspended programs meant to support LGBTQ+ students out of concern that discussion of gender identity could risk her institution’s funding.

    Since the law took effect in April, institutions have been attempting to follow the legislation, often “erring on the side of caution” by canceling programming that could now be prohibited, Wingate noted. 

    “This Court finds that each day the statute remains unclarified, undefined, and under a threat of open interpretation, exacerbates the suppression of protected speech,” Wingate wrote.

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  • We Can’t Ban Generative AI but We Can Friction Fix It (opinion)

    We Can’t Ban Generative AI but We Can Friction Fix It (opinion)

    As the writing across the curriculum and writing center coordinator on my campus, faculty ask me how to detect their students’ use of generative AI and how to prevent it. My response to both questions is that we can’t.

    In fact, it’s becoming increasingly hard to not use generative AI. Back in 2023, according to a student survey conducted on my campus, some students were nervous to even create ChatGPT accounts for fear of being lured into cheating.  It used to be that a student had to seek it out, create an account and feed it a prompt. Now that generative AI is integrated into programs we already use—Word (Copilot), Google Docs (Gemini) and Grammarly—it’s there beckoning us like the chocolate stashed in my cupboard does around 9 p.m. every night.

    A recent GrammarlyGO advertisement emphasizes the seamless integration of generative AI. In the first 25 seconds of this GrammarlyGO ad, a woman’s confident voice tells us that GrammarlyGO is “easy to use” and that it’s “easy to write better and faster” with just “one download” and the “click of a button.” The ad also seeks to remove any concerns about generative AI’s nonhumanness and detectability: it’s “personalized to you”; “understands your style, voice and intent so your writing doesn’t sound like a robot”; and is “custom-made.” “You’re in control,” and “GrammarlyGO helps you be the best version of yourself.”  The message: Using GrammarlyGO’s generative AI to write is not cheating, it’s self-improvement. 

    This ad calls to my mind the articles we see every January targeting those of us who want to develop healthy habits. The ones that urge us to sleep in our gym clothes if we want to start a morning workout routine. If we sleep in our clothes, we’ll reduce obstacles to going to the gym. Some of the most popular self-help advice focuses on the role of reducing friction to enable us to build habits that we want to build. Like the self-help gurus, GrammarlyGO—and all generative AI companies—are strategically seeking to reduce friction by reducing time (“faster), distance (it’s “where you write”) and effort (it’s “easy”!). 

    Where does this leave us? Do we stop assigning writing? Do we assign in-class writing tests? Do we start grading AI-produced assignments by providing AI-produced feedback? 

    Nope. 

    If we recognize the value of writing as a mode of thinking and believe that effective writing requires revision, we will continue to assign writing. While there is a temptation to shift to off-line, in-class timed writing tests, this removes the opportunity for practicing revision strategies and disproportionately harms students with learning disabilities, as well as English language learners.  

    Instead, like Grammarly, we can tap into what the self-help people champion and engage in what organizational behavior researchers Hayagreeva Rao and Robert I. Sutton call “friction fixing.” In The Friction Project (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), they explain how to “think and live like a friction fixer who makes the right things easier and the wrong things harder.” We can’t ban AI, but we can friction fix by making generative AI harder to use and by making it easier to engage in our writing assignments. This does not mean making our writing assignments easier! The good news is that this approach draws on practices already central to effective writing instruction. 

    After 25 years of working in writing centers at three institutions, I’ve witnessed what stalls students, and it is rarely a lack of motivation. The students who use the writing center are invested in their work, but many can’t start or get stuck. Here are two ways we can decrease friction for writing assignments: 

    1. Break research projects into steps and include interim deadlines, conferences and feedback from you or peers. Note that the feedback doesn’t have to be on full drafts but can be on short pieces, such as paragraph-long project proposals (identify a problem, research question and what is gained if we answer this research question). 
    1. Provide students with time to start on writing projects in class. Have you ever distributed a writing assignment, asked, “any questions?” and been met with crickets? If we give students time to start writing in class, we or peers can answer questions that arise, leaving students to feel more confident that they are going in the right direction and hopefully less likely to turn to AI.

    There are so many ways we faculty (unintentionally) make our assignments uninviting: the barrage of words on a page, the lack of white space, our practice of leading with requirements (citation style, grammatical correctness), the use of SAT words or discipline-specific vocabulary for nonmajors: All this can signal to students that they don’t belong even before they’ve gotten started. Sometimes, our assignment prompts can even sound annoyed, as our frustration with past students is misdirected toward current students and manifests as a long list of don’ts. The vibe is that of an angry Post-it note left for a roommate or partner who left their dishes in the sink … again!

    What if we were to reconceive our assignments as invitations to a party instead?  When we design a party invitation, we have particular goals: We want people to show up, to leave their comfort zones and to be open to engaging with other people. Isn’t that what we want from our students when we assign a writing project? 

    If we designed writing assignments as invitations rather than assessments, we would make them visually appealing and use welcoming language.  Instead of barraging students with all the requirements, we would foreground the enticing facets of the assignment. De-emphasize APA and MLA formatting and grammatical correctness and emphasize the purpose of the assignment. The Transparency in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education framework is useful for improving assignment layout. 

    Further, we can invite students to write for real-world audiences and wrestle with what John C. Bean calls “beautiful problems.” As Bean and Dan Melzer’s Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (Wiley, 2021) emphasizes, problems are naturally motivating. From my 25 years of experience teaching writing, students are motivated to write when they:

    • write about issues they care about;
    • write in authentic genres and for real-world audiences;
    • share their writing in and beyond the classroom;
    • receive feedback on drafts from their professors and peers that builds on their strengths and provides specific tasks for how to improve their pieces; and
    • understand the usefulness of a writing project in relation to their future goals. 

    Much of this is confirmed by a three-year study conducted at three institutions that asked seniors to describe a meaningful writing project. If assignments are inviting and meaningful, students are more likely to do the hard work of learning and writing. In short, we can decrease friction preventing engagement with our assignments by making them sound inviting, by using language and layouts that take our audience into consideration, and by designing assignments that are not just assessments but opportunities to explore or communicate. 

    How then do we create friction when it comes to using generative AI? As a writing instructor, I truly believe in the power of writing to figure out what I think and to push myself toward new insights. Of course, this is not a new idea. Toni Morrison explains, “Writing is really a way of thinking—not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.” If we can get students to truly believe this by assigning regular low-stakes writing and reinforcing this practice, we can help students see the limits of outsourcing their thinking to generative AI. 

    As generative AI emerged, I realized that even though my writing courses are designed to promote writing to think, I don’t explicitly emphasize the value of writing as mode of discovery, so I have rewritten all my freewrite prompts so that I drive this point home: “This is low-stakes writing, so don’t worry about sentence structure or grammar. Feel free to write in your native language, use bullet points, or speech to text. The purpose of this freewriting is to give you an opportunity to pause and reflect, make new connections, uncover a new layer of the issue, or learn something you didn’t know about yourself.” And one of my favorite comments to give on a good piece of writing is “I enjoy seeing your mind at work on the page here.” 

    Additionally, we can create friction by getting to know our students and their writing. We can get to know their writing by collecting ungraded, in-class writing at the beginning of the semester. We can get to know our students by canceling class to hold short one-on-one or small group conferences. If we have strong relationships with students, they are less likely to cheat intentionally. We can build these bonds by sharing a video about ourselves, writing introductory letters, sharing our relevant experiences and failures, writing conversational feedback on student writing, and using alternative grading approaches that enable us to prioritize process above product. 

    There are no “AI-proof” assignments, but we can also create friction by assigning writing projects that don’t enable students to rely solely on generative AI, such as zines, class discussions about an article or book chapter, or presentations: Generative AI can design the slides and write the script, but it can’t present the material in class. Require students to include interactive components to their presentations so that they engage with their audiences. For example, a group of my first-year students gave a presentation on a selection from Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, and they asked their peers to check their phones for their daily usage  report and to respond to an anonymous survey.

    Another group created a game, asking the class to guess which books from a display had been banned at one point or another. We can assign group projects and give students time to work on these projects in class; presumably, students will be less likely to misuse generative AI if they feel accountable in some way to their group. We can do a demonstration for students by putting our own prompts through generative AI and asking students to critique the outputs. This has the two-pronged benefit of demonstrating to students that we are savvy while helping them see the limitations of generative AI. 

    Showing students generative AI’s limitations and the harm it causes will also help create friction. Generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate makes it a poor tool for research; its confident tone paired with its inaccuracy has earned it the nickname “bullshit machine.” Worse still are the environmental costs, the exploitation of workers, the copyright infringement, the privacy concerns, the explicit and implicit biases, the proliferation of mis/disinformation, and more. Students should be given the opportunity to research these issues for themselves so that they can make informed decisions about how they will use generative AI. Recently, I dedicated one hour of class time for students to work in groups researching these issues and then present what they found to the class. The students were especially galled by the privacy violations, the environmental impact and the use of writers’ and artists’ work without permission or compensation. 

    When we focus on catching students who use generative AI or banning it, we miss an opportunity to teach students to think critically, we signal to students that we don’t trust them and we diminish our own trustworthiness.  If we do some friction fixing instead, we can support students as they work to become nimble communicators and critical users of new technologies.

    Catherine Savini is the Writing Across the Curriculum coordinator, Reading and Writing Center coordinator, and a professor of English at Westfield State University. She enjoys designing and leading workshops for high school and university educators on writing pedagogy.

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  • Judge blocks Trump’s international enrolment ban

    Judge blocks Trump’s international enrolment ban

    The temporary restraining order (TRO) was issued by federal judge Allison Burroughs on June 5, just one day after President Trump’s signing of a proclamation to suspend the issuing of US visas to international students entering Harvard for an initial six months.   

    During the Massachusetts hearing, Burroughs said Trump’s directive would cause “immediate and irreparable injury” to America’s oldest institution, temporarily blocking it “until there is opportunity to hear from all parties”. 

    The judge also extended a 23 May restraining order which prevents DHS’s attempt to strip Harvard of its ability to enrol international students, until June 20 or when a preliminary injunction is issued, with a hearing set for June 16. 

    The June 4 proclamation came in addition to, and aims to circumvent, DHS secretary Kristi Noem’s revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification, which was also blocked by the courts.  

    Wednesday’s directive – which incorrectly refers to SEVP as the “Student and Exchange Visa Program” – attempts to bar all new international students, scholars and exchange visitors from pursuing any course of study at the university, for a period of six months. 

    With the stroke of a pen, the DHS Secretary and the President have sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body

    Harvard University

    This time, the government framed the ban as a matter of national security, accusing Harvard of collaborating with China. It has repeatedly criticised the institution for failing to root out antisemitism on campus and failing to hand over information on international students.  

    For its part, hours before judge Burroughs’ ruling, Harvard amended a previous lawsuit, alleging both the June 4 proclamation and the DHS revocation were “part of a concerted and escalating campaign of retaliation by the government” in clear retribution for Harvard’s exercising its First Amendment rights to free speech.  

    “With the stroke of a pen, the DHS Secretary and the President have sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body,” it reads, in what the complaint calls a “government vendetta against Harvard”.  

    Last year, Harvard hosted 6,793 international students, totalling over 27% of the entire student body, though Trump has mistakenly called the figure 31%.

    Meanwhile, on June 5, Harvard’s President Garber sent a letter to the Harvard community, informing students that “contingency plans” were being drawn up to allow students to continue their studies during the summer and the upcoming academic year.

    Reaffirming the “outstanding contributions” of international students, Garber vowed to “celebrate them, support them, and defend their interests as we continue to assert our Constitutional rights”.  

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  • Virginia enacts ban on school cellphone use, limits on social media

    Virginia enacts ban on school cellphone use, limits on social media

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    Dive Brief:

    • Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently signed legislation banning cellphone use during school hours for all students. The law makes Virginia the 21st state to ban or limit cellphones in schools, according to a legislation tracker by Ballotpedia. 
    • Starting January 2026, children in Virginia under the age of 16 will also only be allowed to use social media for an hour per day under another law signed by Youngkin in early May. That law, SB 854, mandates that social media companies verify a minor’s age and enforce a time limit of one hour per day for children and young teens.
    • In Florida, a similar — albeit stricter — law passed in 2024 that bans social media use for children under 14 years old hit a roadblock in court. On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily barred parts of HB 3 from being enforced while the case moves forward, saying that the law’s restrictions are “likely facially unconstitutional.”

    Dive Insight:

    Pushes for bans or limits on cellphone and social media use among children are growing as lawmakers and some advocates note the harmful effects of technology on young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

    In 2024, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for social media platforms to display warning labels similar to messages that accompany alcohol and cigarettes. Murthy said at the time that social media is an “important contributor” to the nation’s worsening teen mental health crisis.

    Teens themselves are also increasingly aware of the harmful impacts social media can have on their mental health. A recent Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens found that 48% said social media has a mostly negative impact on their peers — up 16 percentage points from 2022.

    Laws enforcing cellphone bans in schools have also largely gained bipartisan support in both liberal and conservative-leaning states.

    Upon signing Virginia’s K-12 cellphone ban, Youngkin said in a May 30 statement that “students will learn more and be healthier and safer” under this new legislation. “School should be a place of learning and human interaction — free from the distractions and classroom disruptions of cell-phone and social media use.”

    Research from Common Sense Media finds that 1 in 4 children had their own cellphone by the age of 8 in 2024. A separate study from 2023 also revealed that 97% of teens use their phones to some extent during the school day, and that students were most likely to turn to social media, YouTube or gaming when doing so.

    However, data privacy and cybersecurity concerns are rising alongside states’ efforts to enforce broader social media bans outside of school.

    In the Florida case, Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice v. James Uthmeier, challenging the state’s 2024 social media ban for children, the plaintiffs have alleged the law violates the First Amendment and puts Floridians’ online security at risk. The recent order from Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker temporarily prevents the law from requiring those in Florida to provide identification to access social media apps, said NetChoice in a Tuesday statement. 

    “HB 3 violates the First Amendment by forcing all Floridians to hand over their personal data just to access lawful, protected speech online,” NetChoice said of Walker’s order. “It requires websites to collect their users’ sensitive documentation, creating a cybersecurity risk by making private data more vulnerable to hackers and predators.”

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  • Supreme Court rejects case over ‘Two genders’ shirt ban, threatening student speech across New England

    Supreme Court rejects case over ‘Two genders’ shirt ban, threatening student speech across New England

    The Supreme Court just declined to review a case that threatens freedom of speech for over a million students across New England. In thousands of public schools, administrators now have power to silence student speech they dislike.

    Last year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals significantly weakened student speech rights in L.M. v. Town of Middleborough. The case involved a Massachusetts middle schooler named Liam Morrison who was banned from class for wearing a shirt that read, “There are only two genders.” When he taped “CENSORED” over the original message, the school banned that, too.

    Morrison’s school encourages students to express the view that there are many genders, but when he offered a contrary view — the school silenced him. However, if schools want to teach gender identity to seventh graders, the law says they must tolerate dissenting views on the issue. As the Supreme Court famously held in Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, “above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”

    The prohibition on viewpoint-based censorship is a cornerstone of our First Amendment. Without it, the concept of free speech loses much of its meaning. Yet when Morrison and his parents, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, brought suit against the school and the town of Middleborough for violating his freedom of speech, the First Circuit disregarded settled First Amendment law to uphold the school’s censorship. Specifically, the First Circuit misapplied the Supreme Court’s landmark 1969 student speech case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., which established the baseline rule that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

    According to Tinker, schools cannot censor student speech absent evidence that doing so is “necessary” to avoid “material and substantial interference with schoolwork or discipline” or “invasion of the rights of others.” A few years ago, the Court reaffirmed the Tinker standard and emphasized that it’s a “demanding” one.

    But the First Circuit’s recent decision lowers that bar, replacing Tinker’s “substantial interference” test with a far more permissive one. Now, in thousands of public schools across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Puerto Rico, student speech that is “reasonably interpreted” to “demean personal characteristics” and thus “reasonably forecasted to poison the educational atmosphere” can be censored even if it doesn’t target any particular student. 

    That isn’t just a bad ruling. It’s a dangerous one.

    It distorts Tinker’s long-established standard and gives school administrators enormous power to silence unpopular student opinions. In doing so, it elevates disagreement to the level of “disruption” — and permits those experiencing the “discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint” to silence dissenters in ways that directly contradict Tinker.

    The Supreme Court could have reviewed the First Circuit’s problematic decision and put it to rest. Instead, it looked the other way, leaving the lower court’s decision to remain on the books.

    That is quite a blow to student speech rights. As the Supreme Court recently said in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., “America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy.” 

    Unfortunately, the First Circuit’s decision sends a very different message — and the Supreme Court has failed to set the record straight. 

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  • courts intensify effort to block Trump’s int’l enrolment ban

    courts intensify effort to block Trump’s int’l enrolment ban

    • District judge moves to take out an injunction on Trump administration’s Harvard international enrolment ban while the case moves through the legal system.
    • University’s international students report “emotional distress” as many cancel travel plans over fears they will not be allowed back into the US.
    • US Department of Homeland Security boss accuses Harvard of “disdain” for American people and spreading hate.

    Following on from her decision last week to temporarily block the move, district judge Allison Burroughs told a packed court that she wanted to “maintain the status quo” while Harvard’s case works its way through the legal system.

    It’s the latest twist in the university’s ongoing battle with the Trump administration, which has accused it of anti-semitism and stripped it of billions of dollars in funding. For its part, Harvard is coming out swinging against the directive, swiftly mounting a legal challenge – the latest step of which culminated in Burroughs’ judgement in a hearing yesterday.

    In court documents filed ahead of the hearing, Harvard’s director of immigration services at the institution’s international office, Maureen Martin, detailed the toll that the administration’s announcement is taking on the campus’s international students.

    She wrote that the revocation notice has caused both students and faculty to express “profound fear, concern, and confusion” – with the university “inundated” with queries from worried international students.

    “Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies,” said Martin, adding that some are too afraid to attend their own graduation ceremonies this week in case immigration-related action is taken against them.

    Meanwhile, others are cancelling international travel plans over concerns they will not be able to re-enter the US. “Some fear being compelled to return
    abruptly to home countries where they might not be safe due to ongoing conflicts or where they could face persecution based on their identity or background,” Martin wrote.

    Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies
    Maureen Martin, Harvard University

    While US stakeholders may be breathing a sigh of relief at Harvard’s temporary reprieve, Donald Trump’s government is showing no signs of backing down.

    In a letter sent to Harvard before Thursday’s hearing, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that it wanted to move ahead with revoking the university’s SEVP certification, which would mean it could no longer host international students. Notably, though, the letter did not repeat last week’s assertion that Harvard would have 30 days to challenge the decision and suggested the government would not look to immediately enact the directive.

    In a statement released yesterday, US secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, doubled down on accusations that Harvard has not complied with SEVP regulations, has “encouraged and allowed anti-semitic and anti-American violence to rage on its campus” and has been working with the Chinese Communist Party.

    “Harvard’s refusal to comply with SEVP oversight was the latest evidence that it disdains the American people and takes for granted US taxpayer benefits,” she said. “Following our letter to Harvard, the school attempted to claim it now wishes to comply with SEVP standards. We continue to reject Harvard’s repeated pattern of endangering its students and spreading American hate – it must change its ways in order to participate in American programs.”

    Harvard’s row with the Trump administration stems from the stand it took against a raft of government demands, including that it reform its admissions and hiring practices to combat antisemitism on campus, end DEI initiatives and hand over reports on international students.

    When the institution refused to comply with the demands, the government – seemingly in retaliation – froze $2.2 billion in the university’s funding, threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, and demanded that international students’ records be handed over. If Harvard didn’t play ball, it was warned, it risked losing its SEVP certification. 

    Although Harvard did send over some student information on April 30, and maintained that it had provided the information it was legally bound to supply, this seems to have been insufficient for the Trump administration, which then moved to black the institution from hosting international students.

    In yet another blow to the US international education sector, the US government announced this week that it would pause all new study visa interviews at American consulates around the world – sparking dismay from stakeholders.

    And Chinese students studying in the US were plunged into uncertainty yesterday after – amid a trade war with Beijing – the government announced plans to “aggressively revoke” their visas. As yet, it remains unclear whether all Chinese students will be affected or just those with links to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in so-called key areas.

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  • Judge Keeps Block on Harvard International Student Ban

    Judge Keeps Block on Harvard International Student Ban

    The Trump administration still won’t be able to prevent Harvard University from enrolling international students after a federal judge decided Thursday to keep a temporary restraining order in place.

    The hearing before Judge Allison Burroughs in Massachusetts District Court came a week after the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students and required those currently at the university to transfer. Harvard quickly sued to block that decision, and Burroughs granted a temporary restraining order May 23. 

    Harvard argued in the lawsuit that the administration violated the First Amendment and the university’s due process rights with the abrupt revocation. In an apparent effort to address Harvard’s concerns, the administration said ahead of the hearing that it would go through a more formal administrative process to decertify Harvard from the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. According to the notice filed in court Thursday morning, Harvard has 30 days to respond to the claims that it failed to comply with certain reporting requirements and to maintain a campus free from discrimination as well as “practices with foreign entities raising national security concerns.”

    But while that process continues, Burroughs wants to maintain the status quo for Harvard, which means that international students can remain at the university. She plans to eventually issue a preliminary injunction, the next step after a temporary restraining order.

    Burroughs said an order would give “some protection to international students who might be anxious about coming here or anxious about remaining here once they are here,” The Boston Globe reported.

    The government lawyers argued in the hearing that an order wasn’t necessary because of the new notice. But Harvard’s lawyer Ian Heath Gershengorn countered that “we want to make sure there are no shenanigans” while Harvard challenges the Trump administration’s action.

    And despite Burroughs’s quick restraining order, current and prospective international students at Harvard have faced disruptions.

    Maureen Martin, director of immigration services in the Harvard International Office, wrote in a court filing that students scheduled to travel to the United States in the fall found out by the morning of May 23 that their visa applications were denied. (The administration revoked Harvard’s certification May 22.)

    “I am personally aware of at least ten international students or scholars whose visa applications were refused for ‘administrative processing’ immediately following the Revocation Notice,” Martin wrote, adding that none of the visa applications that were refused or revoked following the revocation have been approved or reinstated. 

    For example, when a visiting research scholar at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine tried to obtain a J-1 visa at the U.S. embassy in Prague on May 23, her visa application was rejected.

    “The officer gave the scholar a slip that stated she had ‘been found ineligible for a nonimmigrant visa based on section 221(g) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).’ The slip said, ‘In your case the following is required,’ and the consular officer checked the box marked ‘Other’ and handwrote, ‘SEVP Revocation / Harvard,’” Martin wrote.

    Martin wrote that the Trump administration has caused “significant emotional distress” for current international students and raised a number of questions for either incoming or prospective students who are trying to assess their options. At least one student deferred admission for a year for visa-related reasons.

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  • Judge halts ban on international enrolments at Harvard

    Judge halts ban on international enrolments at Harvard

    In the latest move in the government’s dramatic feud with the US’s oldest university – and a major victory for international education sector – district judge Allison Burroughs issued a temporary restraining order yesterday, halting the directive stripping Harvard of its eligibility to enrol students from overseas.

    It follows the institution’s swift decision to mount a legal challenge against the administration’s demands that it hand over all disciplinary records for international students from the last five years if it wanted to regain its SEVP status.

    In its lawsuit, Harvard said: “With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission.” The next hearing in the case will be held in Boston on May 29.

    If it comes to pass, the ban on international student enrolments would significantly harm Harvard’s financial situation – with last year’s 6,793 overseas students making up a sizeable 27% of the student body.

    With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission
    Harvard University

    Orders from the Trump administration would not only prevent Harvard from enrolling any F-1 or J-1 students for the 2025/26 academic year, but also force current international students to transfer to another university if they want to stay in the country. 

    The move cause widespread panic among international students – especially given that some are set to graduate in just one week.

    Students told The PIE News that they were worried about what was happening, but trusted Harvard to “have our backs”.

    The institution’s row with Harvard stems from the stand it took – one of the only US institutions to do so – against the administrations raft of demands, including that it reform its admissions and hiring practices to combat antisemitism on campus, end DEI initiatives and hand over reports on international students.

    When the institution refused to do so, the government froze $2.2 billion in the university’s funding, threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, and demanded international students’ records if it didn’t want to lose its SEVP certification. 

    Although Harvard did send over some student information on April 30, and maintained that it had provided the information it was legally bound to supply, this seems to have been insufficient for the Trump administration.

    In US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s letter to Harvard, she said: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements”.  

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