Protesters gathered in Houston in June to oppose President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto via Getty Images
An appeals court has reversed the decision to release from custody Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist who was detained by immigration officials for several months last year, The Guardian and other outlets reported Thursday.
The court dismissed the lawsuit challenging his arrest in a 2-to-1 ruling, on the grounds that the lower court that ordered his release did not have the jurisdiction to do so. Circuit judges Thomas Hardiman, a George W. Bush appointee, and Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, argued that the petition for his release should have been handled in his eventual immigration hearing.
“The scheme Congress enacted governing immigration proceedings provides Khalil a meaningful forum in which to raise his claims later on—in a petition for review of a final order of removal,” they wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, however, Judge Arianna J. Freeman, a Biden appointee, argued that it was appropriate for Khalil to seek faster relief in federal court, as his detainment was causing “irreparable injury.”
“Today’s ruling is deeply disappointing, but it does not break our resolve. The door may have been opened for potential re-detainment down the line, but it has not closed our commitment to Palestine and to justice and accountability,” Khalil said in a statement. ”I will continue to fight, through every legal avenue and with every ounce of determination, until my rights, and the rights of others like me, are fully protected.”
Last week, Emily Suski, a law professor and associate dean at the University of South Carolina, was named the next dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law. But on Wednesday, her offer was rescinded after state legislators reportedly objected to her signing a “friend of the court” brief that made legal arguments in support of trans athletes.
The following statement can be attributed to FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley:
The University of Arkansas’ shameful capitulation to political pressure betrays its commitment to Professor Suski and threatens the rights of all who teach, study, and work there. The message to every dean, professor, and researcher is unmistakable: Your job hinges on whether politicians approve of your views.
Political interference in academic decisionmaking must be rejected. When universities make hiring decisions based on politics, left or right, academic freedom gets weaker and campuses grow quieter.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard back-to-back oral arguments Tuesday over two cases that could determine whether transgender women and girls can play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.
The two lawsuits center on two states, Idaho and West Virginia, that have banned transgender women and girls from such teams.Idaho was the first state to implement such a restriction in 2020,and 26 other states have since passed similar laws.
The student in each lawsuit alleges that their state’s restriction violates their 14th Amendment guarantee to equal protection under the law.One of them also contends that the restriction violates Title IX, the sweeping federal law banning sex-based discrimination in federally funded colleges and K-12 schools.
Conservative politicians have championed these policies, including President Donald Trump.
Early in his second term, Trump signed an executive order that threatened to pull federal funding from and open investigations into colleges and K-12 schools that allow transgender women and girls to play on sports teams aligning with their identities.
Comments of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday and their past rulings suggest that those justices may be reluctant to strike down state laws restricting transgender students’ participation in college and K-12 sports.
Last year, the conservative majority upheld a Tennessee law barring transgender teenagers in the state from accessing puberty blockers and hormone treatments. And Brett Kavanaugh, one of the conservative justices, voiced concerns Tuesday about allowing transgender women and girls to play on the same teams as their cisgender peers.
“One of the great successes in America for the last 50 years has been the growth of women and girls sports,” Kavanaugh said.
He added that “a variety of groups” have argued that allowing transgender women and girls to participate on such teams will reverse that success.“For the individual girl who does not make the team, or doesn’t get on the stand for the medal, or doesn’t make all-league, there’s a harm there,” Kavanaugh said. “We can’t sweep that aside.”
Lawyers defending the state bans made similar comments. In defense of West Virginia’s law, state Solicitor General Michael Williams argued that “biological sex matters in athletics in ways both obvious and undeniable.”
Allowing students to participate on teams aligning with their gender identity turns Title IX into a law“that actually denies those opportunities for girls,” Williams said.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the two transgender students suing over the state policies argue that the bans deny them their constitutional rights.
Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Unionrepresenting the student contesting the West Virginia law,argued that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title IX are meant to “protect everyone.”
In that case, West Virginia v. B.P.J., Becky Pepper-Jackson,now a high school student,and her mother sued the state in 2021 over its ban on transgender girls participating in girls’ sports.
Pepper-Jackson has identified as a girl since 3rd grade and takes puberty blockers. She won a narrow district court injunction in July 2021 that blocked West Virginia from applying the law to her, though the judge ended up ruling in favor of the state. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in 2023 allowing her to participate in girls’ sports again.
Block argued that if there are no “physiological differences” between Pepper-Jackson and other girls, there is no reason to exclude her from girls’ sports teams.
“West Virginia’s law treats BPJ differently from other girls on the basis of sex, and it treats her worse in a way that harms her,” Block said.
In the other case, Little v. Hecox,Boise State University student Lindsay Hecox,a transgender woman, sued the state of Idaho in 2020 over its statute, arguing that it violated her constitutional rights by discriminating against transgender women.
Hecox, who receives hormone therapy to suppress testosterone and increase estrogen,scored a victory when a federal judge blocked the law in 2020. Afterward, she tried out for Boise State’s NCAA track and cross-country teams but wasn’t fast enough to make them, so she joined the university’s club soccer and running instead.
A federal appeals court partially upheld the ruling in Hecox’s case in 2024, though it asked the lower court to review the scope. However, Hecox is no longer participating in any college sports as she attempts to finish college “without the extraordinary pressures of this litigation and related public scrutiny,” according to a Supreme Court brief last year.
In September, Hecox asked for the Supreme Court to dismiss her case as moot, citing her impending graduation, her decision not to play sports in Idaho in the future, and the negative attention the case brought her. The justices said they would decide on her request after hearing oral arguments.
Many of Tuesday’s arguments focused on whether transgender women and girls would have a competitive advantage over cisgender women and girls. There is not consensus among medical experts, and there have been limited studies on the matter.
In one 2021 study, transgender women in the U.S. Air Force were faster than their cisgender peers following two years of hormone treatments, though they couldn’t complete more sit-ups or pushups.
But Joshua Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, wrote in a 2022 article for the Journal of the Endocrine Society that there “does not seem to be any reason to expect advantage for transgender people prior to puberty of or for transgender people whose gender-affirming treatment begins at the onset of puberty.”
He added that more research was needed on the topic.
In a 2024 study, researchers found transgender women who had completed at least a year of hormone therapy had higher absolute hand grip strength than cisgender women but lower relative jump height. They cautioned against “precautionary bans and sport eligibility exclusions that are not based on sport-specific (or sport-relevant) research.”
For years, state laws prohibiting transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams matching their gender identity have proliferated, along with legal challenges to these bans.
But now, the U.S. Supreme Court may settle what’s become a national controversy.
On Tuesday, the high court considered the legality of the bans in Idaho and West Virginia.
In more than three hours of oral arguments, the justices and attorneys debated when there should be exceptions allowed to broad legislation that discriminates against specific groups, how the presence or absence of medical testosterone regulation and biological performance advantages affect the legality of these prohibitions, whether sex should be defined as biological sex under Title IX, and what Title IX’s allowance for sex-segregated teams means if transgender women are allowed to play on women’s teams.
“You don’t think we should have an operating definition of sex in Title IX?” Chief Justice John Roberts said at one point to an attorney representing a trans child.
Lawyers representing the students who have challenged the bans said the cases were about access to athletics for a small number of transgender people, including those who are regulating their testosterone. Kathleen R. Hartnett, an attorney challenging the Idaho ban, said her client “has suppressed her testosterone for over a year and taken estrogen,” saying the Idaho law “fails heightened scrutiny” as applied to such trans women “who have no sex-based biological advantage as compared to birth sex females.”
Twenty-seven states ban trans women from participating at some level of athletics, according to lawyers both defending and arguing against such prohibitions. Repeatedly Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked whether states that don’t have such bans are breaking the law or should be allowed discretion—suggesting he’s considering a ruling affecting more than the restrictions in Idaho and West Virginia.
Kavanaugh asked whether states without prohibitions are violating Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, and whether sex under Title IX could reasonably be interpreted to allow different states to define it differently. He said trans participation can harm girls who don’t make the cutoff for teams, but also expressed hesitancy to rule nationally, asking why the court should “constitutionalize a rule for the whole country while there’s still … uncertainty and debate.”
Justice Samuel Alito didn’t ask many questions, but when he did, he homed in on how sex should be defined under Title IX. He asked how the court could determine discrimination based on sex without determining what sex means. He also asked whether female athletes who oppose transgender women on their teams should be considered “deluded” or “bigots.”
At one point, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that “I’ve been wondering what’s straightforward after all this discussion.” Regarding whether puberty blockers eliminate all competitive advantage, Gorsuch said there’s a “scientific dispute about the efficacy of some of these treatments.”
Almost a year ago, long after West Virginia and Idaho passed their laws, President Trump signed an executive order banning trans women from participating in women’s sports and threatening universities with loss of federal funding if they disobey. The next day, the NCAA announced a policy restricting “competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.”
The Trump administration has since pressured institutions to bar trans women. In April, for example, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights concluded that the University of Pennsylvania violated Title IX by allowing a trans woman to compete on a women’s sports team—presumably referring to Lia Thomas, who last competed on the swim team in 2022, in accord with NCAA policies at that time.
Idaho and West Virginia
The court took up two cases Tuesday, Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. These suits, which center on whether anti–transgender participation laws violate Title IX and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, have been ongoing for years.
In 2020, Idaho became the first state to pass a law outright banning trans girls and women from participating in school sports matching their gender identity. Lindsay Hecox is a trans woman who was nevertheless able to participate in women’s club running and club soccer at Boise State University because she sued that same year and a district court blocked enforcement of the law against her.
In 2024, her lawyers wrote that she tried out for the university’s women’s cross-country and track teams but didn’t make it, “consistently running slower than her cisgender women competitors.” Her attorneys stress that her “circulating testosterone levels are typical of cisgender women.”
Hecox’s attorneys had opposed the Supreme Court taking up the case, previously writing that it’s “about a four-year-old injunction against the application of [the Idaho law] with respect to one woman, which is allowing her to participate in club running and club soccer.” Then, in September 2025, her lawyers argued the case had become moot, saying Hecox dismissed her claims and “committed not to try out for or participate in any school-sponsored women’s sports covered by” the state law.
“In the five years since this case commenced, Ms. Hecox has faced significant challenges that have affected her both personally and academically,” including an illness and her father’s death, her lawyers wrote. They said she’s “come under negative public scrutiny from certain quarters because of this litigation, and she believes that such continued—and likely intensified—attention in the coming school year will distract her from her schoolwork and prevent her from meeting her academic and personal goals.”
“While playing women’s sports is important to Ms. Hecox, her top priority is graduating from college and living a healthy and safe life,” they wrote.
But attorneys defending the Idaho law have argued not to dismiss the case—a position that may allow a national ruling from the high court.
Protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices heard arguments in two cases concerning trans athletes.
Ryan Quinn | Inside Higher Ed
On Tuesday, Alan M. Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general, argued that the case wasn’t moot, saying Hecox’s plans about whether to play sports have changed before and may change again. Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged this, saying Hurst was asking the court to “force an unwilling plaintiff … to continue prosecuting this case.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said “it’s a little odd that a defendant would not want a case dismissed.”
Hurst argued that Idaho’s law wasn’t about excluding transgender people, saying the Legislature there instead “wanted to keep women’s sports women-only.” He also said testosterone doesn’t reliably suppress performance.
“Sports are assigned by sex because sex is what matters in sports,” Hurst said.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked whether Hurst was arguing to allow separation by biological sex of even 6-year-olds in sports. Hurst replied that even at that age, boys have a small advantage, but co-ed sports could be an option.
The West Virginia case was filed by the mother of Becky Pepper-Jackson, then a transgender sixth grader, back in 2021. Judges blocked enforcement of the Mountain State’s law against the student.
“In West Virginia’s telling, it passed [its law] to ‘save women’s sports’ by staving off an impending tidal wave of ‘bigger, faster, and stronger males’ from stealing championships, scholarships, and opportunities from female athletes,” the student’s lawyers wrote. “In reality, West Virginia’s law banned exactly one sixth-grade transgender girl from participating on her school’s cross-country and track-and-field teams with her friends.”
Her attorneys wrote that the sports she’s participated in are non-contact, and that she “has received puberty-delaying medication and gender-affirming estrogen that allowed her to undergo a hormonal puberty typical of girls, with all the physiological musculoskeletal characteristics of cisgender girls and none of the testosterone-induced characteristics of cisgender boys.”
They wrote that she “wants to play sports for the same reasons most kids do: to have fun and make friends as part of a team.” She’s participated in post-season shot put and discus, “where her performance is well within the range of cisgender girls her age,” they wrote.
Lawyers defending the West Virginia law, though, wrote that “male athletes identifying as female are increasingly competing in women’s sports, erasing the opportunities Title IX ensured.” They wrote that “women and girls have lost places on sports teams, surrendered spots on championship podiums, and suffered injuries competing against bigger, faster, and stronger males.”
Michael R. Williams, West Virginia’s solicitor general, said the state’s law “is indifferent to gender identity because sports are indifferent to gender identity,” and said “we don’t have an actual transgender exclusion.” He also argued that Title IX defines sex as biological sex because that was the understanding at the time Congress passed it.
Barrett suggested West Virginia’s arguments could be used by a state to argue for separate math classrooms if it produced a study saying women’s presence in calculus was holding men back. Gorsuch made similar arguments.
Federal Intervention
In both cases Tuesday, the federal government defended the state laws. Hashim M. Mooppan, the U.S. principal deputy solicitor general, said Title IX regulations “say you can separate based on sex … the circulating testosterone levels are just legally irrelevant under the regulations.” He also said transgender women aren’t “being excluded from participating on the boys team.”
During and after the oral arguments, hundreds of proponents for trans athletes and opponents held dueling rallies right next to each other outside the Supreme Court, each with their own sound systems and speakers. Education Secretary Linda McMahon was among those who spoke in favor of the state bans.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon speaks outside the US Supreme Court as justices hear arguments in challenges to state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Photo by Oliver Contreras / AFP via Getty Images
In her remarks, McMahon praised a legal organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, that was defending the bans, and touted the Trump administration’s actions to “restore common sense by returning sanity to the sexes.” She also criticized the Biden administration’s regulations that declared that sex-based discrimination, which is barred under Title IX, includes discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. A federal judge vacated those Title IX regulations in early 2025.
“In just four years, the Biden Administration reversed decades of progress, twisting the law to argue that ‘sex’ is not defined by objective biological reality, but by the subjective notion of ‘gender identity,’’’ she said. (The Title IX regulations took effect in August 2024 but federal courts had already blocked them in dozens of states.)
McMahon added that while the Supreme Court deliberates, the administration will continue enforcing Title IX “as it was intended, rooted in biological reality to ensure fairness, safety, and equal access to education programs for women and girls across our nation.”
“As President Trump has made clear, America is in its Golden Age, one where female students and athletes have equal access to fair and safe competitions and female-only intimate spaces, free from divisive and discriminatory ideologies,” she said.
Several hundred feet from the White House, down a concrete path and across a quiet brick courtyard adorned with historical markers lie the doors to a small courthouse.
Inside, etched into the stone wall, is a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “It is as much the duty of government to render prompt justice against itself, in favor of citizens, as it is to administer the same, between private individuals.”
It’s apt for what’s in this building: the Court of Federal Claims, a legal venue where the U.S. government is always the one being sued. The building is now poised to be the site of fights over droves of terminated research grants.
Although it’s the latest iteration of a court that’s existed since 1855, predating Lincoln’s election, it’s not a well-known institution. It’s not the subject of on-screen, steamy legal dramas. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s preliminary rulings last year have elevated its importance for higher ed.
A majority of justices say this 16-judge court likely has jurisdiction over lawsuits regarding thousands of National Institutes of Health federal research grants that the Trump administration has tried to terminate, as well as other fights concerning canceled grants. If the Supreme Court sticks by its current thinking in final rulings, the Court of Federal Claims could be handling fights over countless grants that the Trump administration and future higher ed-targeting presidencies may try to cancel in the future.
One catch: This court doesn’t have the authority to actually restore the grants. It can award money for canceled ones, but experienced lawyers who practice before it disagree on whether it will provide compensation even approaching what the grants were worth—they can be for millions of dollars apiece.
Attorneys also say that researchers likely won’t have the right in this court to challenge their grant terminations; they’ll have to rely on their universities to sue on their behalf because the institutions are the legal parties to research grants. Overall, it’s generally unclear how a research grant-related case would turn out in this court.
“This is—I think esoteric is probably an understatement,” said Bob Wagman, president of the Court of Federal Claims Bar Association and a lawyer before the court for 25 years.
Lobby of the United States Court of Federal Claims building.
Ryan Quinn/Inside Higher Ed
‘A Mess’
As far as Wagman knows, the court has yet to say what level of monetary damages plaintiffs could win from the court over research grant terminations. He said that’s just one of a number of “threshold” issues judges will have to decide on regarding how these cases will work.
“It’s just been sort of an avalanche and people are trying to figure out what makes the most sense,” Wagman said.
Ted Waters, the managing partner at Feldesman LLP and a George Washington University Law School adjunct professor, said “it’s all a mess because nobody knows what the rules are.”
He contends that plaintiffs before this court couldn’t win back the full value of their grants but instead only “out-of-pocket termination costs,” such as the expense of giving two weeks’ severance pay to employees a university hired in expectation of receiving the grant. He said Congress didn’t create the Court of Federal Claims and the special appeals court that’s over it to deal with federal grants; it’s meant for contracts, such as when the government purchases items from companies.
“This is all new stuff, and none of the kinks have been worked out,” said Waters, who’s been working in the federal grants field since 1992.
Heather Pierce, senior director of science policy for the Association of American Medical Colleges, said thousands of terminated NIH grant cases going to the Court of Federal Claims “would clog the court immediately.” Elizabeth Hecker, a senior counsel with specialty in higher ed for Crowell & Moring LLP, echoed that.
“There’s gonna be a tremendous backup … and these are gonna take years and years and years to decide,” Hecker said. “Whereas, if you go to federal district court, you can get a preliminary injunction.”
But Waters doubts there will be a flood of cases. He said there’s little to fight over because researchers can’t get the relief they want from the court.
The [Supreme] Court grapples with none of these complexities before sending plaintiffs through the labyrinth it has created.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Anuj Vohra, a partner at Crowell & Moring LLP, who began his career in Washington working for the Justice Department before the court, said “the court does not have equitable powers to reinstate grants, and I think that is, in large part, why the government is trying to move much of this litigation to the court.”
He said plaintiffs will have to expend resources to win in this court and, while “we don’t know exactly how the Department of Justice is going to defend these grant terminations, … I assume they’re going to argue that the researchers are entitled to something less than the entire amount of the grant.”
Still, Vohra said he doesn’t think going to the court would be pointless.
“Grant terminations have not historically been litigated in the Court of Federal Claims, and so the challenges we’re seeing now are kind of charting a new course in terms of damages, theories and entitlement,” he said. “But I certainly don’t think it’s a fool’s errand to come to the court, and I think we’re going to see a lot more litigation over grant terminations this year.”
Courtyard of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims building. Lincoln’s secretary of state lived and was almost assassinated at this site.
Ryan Quinn/Inside Higher Ed
‘The Labyrinth’
Not all the Supreme Court justices thought this was a good idea.
The conservative majority, absent Chief Justice John Roberts, first mentioned the Court of Federal Claims last year in one line in a roughly two-page preliminary ruling in April.
“The Tucker Act grants the Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over suits based on ‘any express or implied contract with the United States,’” the majority wrote, reasoning that canceled Education Department K-12 teacher training grants in that case were contracts.
There was only one justice, and that’s Amy Coney Barrett, who thought that that was the right outcome.”
Elizabeth Hecker, senior counsel with Crowell & Moring LLP
Then, in August, in ongoing litigation over the Trump administration’s termination of thousands of NIH research grants, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the deciding vote. In a five-page preliminary opinion, she said a regular federal district court “likely lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges to the grant terminations, which belong in the Court of Federal Claims.” In a partial concurrence with Barrett, Justice Neil Gorsuch criticized the lower court judge—who had ruled the grants should be reinstated while the case continued—for not following the conservative majority’s earlier (also preliminary) ruling in the Education Department lawsuit.
“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote. He said that, even though the decision in the Education Department case wasn’t a final judgment, “when this Court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson countered in a 20-page dissent that “the Court of Federal Claims is authorized to award only money damages for contract breaches, not reinstatement of grant funding improperly terminated in violation of federal law.” She defended the district court’s decision.
“Having struck down unlawful agency action, the District Court ‘also had the authority to grant the complete relief’ that followed,” Jackson wrote, quoting precedent. “Under the rule the Court announces today, however, no court can reinstate the plaintiffs’ grants.” In a footnote, she added that “the Court grapples with none of these complexities before sending plaintiffs through the labyrinth it has created.”
A plaque outside the United States Court of Federal Claims building.
Ryan Quinn/Inside Higher Ed
Barrett concluded in her August decision that the district court did likely have the right to void the NIH guidance upon which the agency based its terminations, even though it likely didn’t have the right to restore the grants. But four of Barrett’s colleagues said the district court was likely wrong on both issues, while the other four said the district court was likely right on both.
That meant Barrett was the deciding vote on a split order that allowed universities, researchers and other organizations to challenge the guidance in district court, but said they had to challenge the actual grant terminations in the Court of Federal Claims.
“There was only one justice, and that’s Amy Coney Barrett, who thought that that was the right outcome,” said Hecker, of Crowell & Moring LLP. She said “it’s a very unusual and seemingly inefficient way to go about doing things.”
Hecker said one way to avoid this dual-track litigation would be for plaintiffs challenging grant terminations to use constitutional arguments—such as claiming that grant cancellations violate the First Amendment—rather than the Administrative Procedure Act, a law cited in the NIH grants case that invited the counter-argument from the government that the cases belonged in the Court of Federal Claims.
Waters, of Feldesman LLP, said the ramifications of sending grant cases to the Court of Federal Claims extend far beyond higher ed, to highways, green technology and more.
“The importance of grant programs—I don’t think people realized until now,” he said, adding that they “touch the whole fabric of American society.”
Wagman, the president for the court’s bar association, said he thinks that, given the uncertainty of how claims for money before the court will turn out, most people would just prefer their grants be reinstated.
“But if that’s all you got,” he said, “that’s all you got.”
President Donald Trump did not exceed his authority when he issued a Sept. 19 proclamation requiring employers to pay an additional $100,000 before new H-1B visas can be processed, a federal district court judge held Dec. 23 in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
President Trump legitimately exercised his broad discretion authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act to restrict the entry of noncitizens into the U.S., the judge found. Trump found the proclamation was necessary to counter abuse of the H-1B program, which the proclamation asserts is harming American workers and creating a national security threat, he said.
The ruling does not discount the contributions H-1B workers are making to the American economy, the judge stressed. But the parties’ debate over how the proclamation will affect employers and the economy is not within the court’s province to decide, so long as it is within the confines of the law, she said.
Dive Insight:
The Association of American Universities and the Chamber, a business federation with approximately 300,000 members, sued the Trump Administration in October. It was the first of at least three lawsuits by different groups challenging the proclamation, including California v. Noem, filed mid-December by 20 state attorney generals from mainly Democratic states.
The litigation focuses on two issues — that President Trump exceeded his delegated authority, or acted “ultra vires,” under the INA and that DHS and the State Department “arbitrarily” implemented the proclamation without following proper notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The judge ruled against AAU and the Chamber on both claims. The INA’s “exceedingly broad language” gives President Trump the authority to issue the proclamation, which he backed with evidence showing how the H-1B program is being abused, and the proclamation does not contravene the INA’s H-1B scheme, the judge held.
As for the second issue, DHS and the State Department “plainly do not act ‘arbitrarily and capriciously’ or ‘contrary to law’ in implementing a legally permissible presidential directive,” the judge wrote. “Indeed, defendants here had no other course of action” because agencies “‘may not simply disregard’ a binding presidential directive,” she said.
Following the ruling, the Chamber posted a statement by Executive Vice President and Chief Counsel Daryl Joseffer that said, “The $100,000 fee makes H-1B visas cost prohibitive for businesses, especially small- and medium-sized businesses that can least afford it. We are disappointed in the court’s decision and are considering further legal options to ensure that the H-1B visa program can operate as Congress intended: to enable American businesses of all sizes to access the global talent they need to grow their operations.”
Each passing year gets busier and busier for FIRE, and this year was no different. The numbers alone say a lot: With a current caseload of 34 litigation cases and 300 more non-litigation advocacy matters, 50 amicus brief submissions, and 21,500 media mentions (and counting!) under our belt, FIRE is bringing the heat everywhere.
Our big — and growing! — community of supporters enabled us to go big and be bold, to stand up to bullies, to stand up for everyday Americans, and to fight for that precious right to free speech that we all love and cherish. We are proud to serve as the nation’s premier free speech watchdog and achieve victories like those highlighted below.
In Court
FIRE notched major litigation victories this year, proving our prowess in court as America’s leading First Amendment defender.
These are just some of the cases our team of in-house First Amendment attorneys are litigating directly, but we can’t forget the 50 amicus briefs filed to advance the law.
Demonstrating our ability to defendexpressive rights without ever setting foot in court, FIRE notched nearly 80 victories defending the First Amendment rights of everyday Americans in 2025.
As usual, our cases ran the gamut from defending a student threatened with discipline for wearing a TPUSA hat, to rallying the residents of a New Jersey town to defeat an ordinance requiring a $2 million insurance policy if residents wanted to demonstrate, to fighting for a student journalist who was kicked off campus for publishing criticism of the campus administration.
At the Institute of American Indian Arts, criticism of school officials is ‘bullying’
Administrators kicked the Young Warrior’s editor out of student housing and put him on probation for publishing student work critical of school officials.
In 1999, we started our work on campus because the American university is ground zero for censorship. It’s the place where we see illiberal trends emerge and generations indoctrinated with “free speech for me but not for thee” attitudes. It’s vital we defend and promote the values of free expression on campus so we can secure them for our country and Americans everywhere.
This year, FIRE met with dozens of campus leaders, resulting in the reform of more than 30 campus policies impacting over 1 million students. We added four new institutions to our list of “green light” schools that maintain no restrictive speech policies, making this the first school year in our history when we tracked more schools that protect speech in their policies than schools that significantly restrict it.
And, FIRE continues to shape the next generation of free speech leaders. We hosted 22 interns, 14 legal clerks, 100 undergrads at our Student Network Summer Conference, and 200 high schoolers at our second annual week-long summer camp, the Free Speech Forum. Our programs are free to attend and leave young people inspired. Here’s what just one had to say:
Before FIRE . . . I could not engage in a civil conversation over controversial topics. After FIRE, I’ve had many civil conversations over the same or different topics. What’s different? I listen, I ask, then I speak.
Thought Leadership
Guiding the national conversation back to nonpartisan free speech principles, FIRE was everywhere this year, warning politicians across the political spectrum that practicing censorship will come back to haunt them, combating the “words are violence” cliche, and explaining that “hate speech” is protected speech. Our staffers placed op-eds in leading publications like The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, and Reason; and The New York Times ran a front-page profile of FIRE and featured FIRE President and CEO Greg Lukianoff on an episode of The Daily.
Greg was on the speaking circuit nonstop this year. The highlight was his TED Talk, which introduced hundreds of thousands to FIRE’s mission. Check it out if you haven’t yet!
Thank You!
As a nonprofit organization, these achievements are only possible thanks to the generosity of our supporters. If you’ve already donated this year, please know that we sincerely appreciate your support. If you haven’t yet, please consider joining our growing movement of principled, nonpartisan free speech defenders by making a donation before the end of the year.
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The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down the state’s controversial social studies standards, citing last minute changes that included lessons on the Bible. The standards were pushed by former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and adopted by the state board of education earlier this year.
In the closely divided opinion, the state supreme court ruled that the creation of the standards violated the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act, which requires state boards to publicly post such changes in an effort to maintain transparency.
“The version of the Standards approved by the Board on February 27, 2025, was not publicly posted until after the Board voted on the 2025 Standards,” the 5-4 majority opinion said. “Three Board members stated in a subsequent meeting of the Board that they did not know that the version they were voting on was different from the version publicly posted in December 2024.”
In addition, board members were notified of the new standards approximately 17 hours before voting on them, the opinion stated.
The 11th hour changes to the curriculum included requiring:
First grade students to identify how David, Goliath, Moses and the Ten Commandments influenced American colonists, founders and culture.
Second grade students to “identify stories from Christianity that influenced the America Founders and culture, including teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.”
Fifth graders to explain how “Biblical principles” influenced the American founders.
High school students to describe Biblical stories.
High school students to “identify discrepancies in the 2020 election results,” partly by examining “the sudden halting of ballot counting” and “the security risks of mail-in balloting.”
High school students to “identify the source of COVID-19 pandemic from a Chinese lab.”
The state court, however, did not decide whether the inclusion of these topics violated the FIrst Amendment, which protects religious freedom. Instead, it said the board adopted “fundamentally different substantive Standards” without proper public notification.
The standards were already on pause since September, when the state supreme court said the 2019 standards would stay in place until the lawsuit challenging the 2025 standards was decided.
The decision this week keeps the old standards in place until the state board “properly” creates new standards for social studies, which will then go to the legislature for approval, the opinion states.
“The Oklahoma State Supreme Court just launched an incredibly aggressive attack on Christianity, the Bible, on President Trump,” said Walters in a video posted to X on Wednesday. The standards, he said, were meant to “bring back an understanding of the role of the Bible in world history and American history.”
“These justices should be ashamed of themselves,” he added, calling on the justices to resign. Walters resigned in September from his role as top education official of Oklahoma, after a turbulent time in office that included other attempts to incorporate the Bible in public schools.
Civil rights organizations celebrated the ruling.
“The authority to govern comes with accountability for making decisions in the full view of the people the government serves,” said Brent Rowland, legal director of Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, a nonprofit that focuses on education and other local social issues, in a Tuesday statement. “This decision moves us toward the open, rigorous, and inclusive public education our students deserve.”
Universities can’t encourage professors to wade into controversial subjects, then punish professors for disagreeing with the administration
Court: “Student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor.”
SEATTLE, Dec. 19, 2025 — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today delivered a decisive victory for the First Amendment rights of public university faculty in Reges v. Cauce. Reversing a federal district court’s opinion, the Ninth Circuit held University of Washington officials violated the First Amendment when they punished Professor Stuart Reges for substituting his satirical take on the university’s preferred “land acknowledgment” statement on his syllabus.
On Dec. 8, 2021, Reges criticized land acknowledgment statements in an email to faculty, and on Jan. 3, 2022, he parodied UW’s model statement in his syllabus: “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.” Reges’s statement was a nod to John Locke’s philosophical theory that property rights are established by labor.
Represented by FIRE, Reges filed a First Amendment lawsuit in July 2022 challenging the university’s actions, which included a months-long “harassment” investigation. University officials created a competing class, so students wouldn’t have to take a computer science class from someone who didn’t parrot the university’s preferred opinions.
“Today’s opinion is a resounding victory for Professor Stuart Reges and the First Amendment rights of public university faculty,” said FIRE attorney Gabe Walters. “The Ninth Circuit agreed with what FIRE has said from the beginning: Universities can’t force professors to parrot an institution’s preferred political views under pain of punishment.”
Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Daniel Bress stated: “A public university investigated, reprimanded, and threatened to discipline a professor for contentious statements he made in a class syllabus. The statements, which mocked the university’s model syllabus statement on an issue of public concern, caused offense in the university community. Yet debate and disagreement are hallmarks of higher education. Student discomfort with a professor’s views can prompt discussion and disapproval. But this discomfort is not grounds for the university retaliating against the professor. We hold that the university’s actions toward the professor violated his First Amendment rights.”
That’s exactly right.
“Today’s opinion recognizes that sometimes, ‘exposure to views that distress and offend is a form of education unto itself,’” said FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley. “As we always say at FIRE: If you graduate from college without once being offended, you should ask for your money back.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.
CONTACT:
Karl de Vries, Director of Media Relations, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]
The coalition of states, led by California’s attorney general Rob Bonta, has argued Trump’s September proclamation bypasses required rulemaking procedures and exceeds the authority of the President’s executive branch.
They said the fee violates federal law which allows immigration authorities to collect only necessary fees to cover the cost of administering visa processes.
“The Trump administration thinks it can raise costs on a whim, but the law says otherwise,” declared Bonta on December 12.
“We are going to court to defend California’s residents and their access to the world-class universities, schools, and hospitals that make Californians proud to call this state home,” he said.
The plaintiffs argued the $100,000 fee required for certain H-1B petitions would put “unnecessary” and “illegal” financial burdens on public employers and providers of vital services, exacerbating labour shortages in key sectors.
The lawsuit filed last week in a federal court in Boston is the third to challenge Trump’s September 19 proclamation raising the cost of an H-1B visa petition to $100,000 – over 20 times the current cost which ranges between $2,000 and $5,000.
The H-1B visa enables US employers to temporarily hire international workers in “specialty occupations” from healthcare to computer science and financial analysis. California’s tech industry is particularly reliant on the visa stream.
A month after the initial proclamation, the administration clarified the controversial fee would not apply to international students and other visa holders changing status in the country – an update that commentators say will cause US companies to lean heavily into hiring US trained international students.
The White House previously said the fee would combat the “large-scale abuse” of the program which was replacing American workers and undermining the country’s economic and national security.
The Trump Administration thinks it can raise costs on a whim, but the law says otherwise
Rob Bonta, California Attorney General
The states bringing the lawsuit are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Their legal action follows the US Chamber of Commerce bringing a case against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and an earlier case, Global Nurse Force v. Trump, challenging the policy on similar grounds to the most recent suit.
Plaintiffs in the Chamber of Commerce lawsuit are seeking a preliminary injunction that would temporarily ban the fee being imposed while the legality of the proclamation is litigated. A district court hearing is due to be held today (December 19) on the injunction.
In addition to the fee hike, businesses and prospective employers are keeping a close eye on government plans to overhaul the H-1B system in favour of higher wage earners.
A change of this sort is likely to have wide-reaching implications for global talent flows to the US, with over half of postgraduate students indicating in a recent survey that they wouldn’t have enrolled at US institutions if access to H-1B was determined by wage levels.
