Supreme Court sides with Trump in fight tied to speech curbs on immigration judges
By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, May 26 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court sided with President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday in a dispute involving federal immigration judges’ free speech challenge to a U.S. government policy restricting what it can say publicly about immigration.
In an unsigned ruling, the justices overturned the lower court’s decision and sent the case back to that court for further proceedings. The decision did not address the legal basis of the speech restrictions enacted during Trump’s first term as president.
The Trump administration appealed to the justices after a lower court ordered it to make findings on whether firing the heads of agencies that oversee federal worker complaints deprived those agencies of the independence from White House control that Congress intended. The lower court said such a finding could give immigration judges the right to have their day in court.
A group representing immigration judges had also appealed the lower court’s ruling that challenges to speech restrictions should be made to agencies — as long as they are functional — rather than to the courts. That appeal was rejected on Tuesday.
The policy requires immigration judges to get prior approval before any “official” conversations. According to court records, such speaking engagements are meetings in which a judge “is invited to attend an event by virtue of his official position, is expected to discuss department policies, programs, or a matter directly related to his official duties or otherwise appearing on behalf of the department.”
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the U.S. agency that employs about 750 immigration judges and oversees the nation’s immigration courts, enacted the policy during Trump’s first term. The policy was reviewed but ultimately left in place by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration and continued by Trump’s current administration.
The National Association of Immigration Judges, a group that represents judges, filed a lawsuit in 2020 to block the policy, arguing that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government curtailment of free speech.
A Virginia-based federal judge rejected the court challenge in 2023, saying a 1978 U.S. law called the “Civil Service Reform Act” specifies that the challenge must be brought before independent U.S. agencies that usually handle federal worker complaints rather than in court. Under this law, certain federal labor complaints are reviewed by the Office of Special Counsel, which decides whether to refer the case to the Merit Systems Protection Board for adjudication.
But in June 2025, the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Trump’s removal of the heads of those agencies raised serious questions about whether immigration judges could get a fair hearing before the agencies. The judge ordered the judge to gather information on that question, prompting the Trump administration to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The justices accused the 4th Circuit on Tuesday of basing its decision on an argument not made by a party to the case.
Trump has fired scores of independent agency heads despite laws preventing those officials from being fired at will.
In a separate case, the Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June on the Trump administration’s argument that such impeachment protections unconstitutionally curtail presidential power.
The association representing immigration judges argued in its appeal that challenges to speech restrictions like the one at issue in this case should be allowed to go to trial, regardless of whether federal agencies are obstructed.
The Supreme Court has backed Trump on several emergency immigration decisions since his return to the presidency, including allowing him to deport immigrants to countries other than their own and revoking the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.
The court is also expected to rule by the end of June on the legality of Trump’s directive to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States and the administration’s proposal to rescind temporary legal protections for more than 350,000 Haitians and about 6,100 Syrians living in the United States.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
