The Volokh Conspiracy

Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent | Est. 2002

The Volokh Conspiracy

Free Speech

Free Speech Unmuted: Trump's War on Big Law

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Jane Bambauer and I discuss President Trump's Executive Orders that target major law firms (such as WilmerHale and Jenner & Block). The Orders target the firms for retaliation based largely on their past support of various left-wing legal causes. Do those Orders violate the firms' (and their clients') Free Speech Clause or Petition Clause rights? Might they also violate the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause (in civil cases) and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel (in criminal cases)?

See also our past episodes:

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Judge Ho Dismisses - With Prejudice - the Criminal Case Against NYC Mayor Eric Adams

The DOJ's rather heavy-handed attempt to coerce an elected municipal official to do its bidding on immigration matters is firmly and properly rejected

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The district court in SDNY has dismissed the criminal case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams. The dismissal is with prejudice, i.e., the charges cannot be re-filed at a later date; the court rejected the DOJ's attempt to have the case dismissed without prejudice, which would have left the DOJ free to re-instate the charges at any time and for any reason. [The lengthy and quite comprehensive opinion by Judge Ho is available here].

"Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions."

I have put lengthy excerpts from Judge Ho's opinion below.  A brief summary:

First, the court was highly skeptical of DOJ's asserted rationale for dismissing the charges against Adams, calling them "pretextual." But it felt that it was in no position to deny the motion to dismiss in its entirety, because it would then "have no way to compel the government to prosecute [the] case":

"A court cannot force the Department of Justice to prosecute a defendant. That is by design. In our constitutional system of separation of powers, a court's role in a criminal case is to preside over the matter—not to decide whether the defendant should be prosecuted….  Any decision by this Court to deny the Government's Motion to Dismiss would be futile at best, because DOJ could—and, by all indications, unequivocally would—simply refuse to prosecute the case, inevitably resulting in a dismissal after seventy days for violating the Mayor's right to a speedy trial"

However, as to whether the dismissal should be with or without prejudice, the court - correctly[**] - found that dismissing the charges without prejudice, as the DOJ had requested, would "leave Mayor Adams under the specter of reindictment at essentially any time, and for essentially any reason … a sword of Damocles … that would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor's freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents."

It therefore had no real option other than a dismissal with prejudice.  Read More

Donald Trump

The Domicile Dead-End

Evan Bernick's third in a series of guest-blogging posts on birthright citizenship.

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Trump's anti-birthright executive order is often described as being targeted at people who enter the country unlawfully. But its scope is broader, closely tracking the anti-birthright "theory" of disgraced, disbarred, and discredited former Chapman University law professor John Eastman. Consistently with Eastman's proposals on the subject, the EO also excludes the children of immigrants who entered the country legally but are not lawful permanent residents—i.e., not green-card holders.

I've spent the last two posts critiquing Kurt Lash's shockingly weak argument that the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause excludes the children of unlawful entrants from citizenship. But not even Lash commits to defending the component of Trump's EO which excludes lawful temporary visitors. The obvious problem with this component from the standpoint of Lash's parental-loyalty-based account of birthright citizenship is that lawful temporary visitors have voluntarily submitted themselves to the sovereign power of the United States, which has authorized their presence within its borders. There's nothing "disloyal" about this that would rebut Lash's crucial presumption in favor of parental loyalty—and thus birthright citizenship.

But the Trump administration's lawyers are making arguments for exclusion, and they are citing articles which they claim to be supportive of their position. They assert the existence of a constitutional requirement that a person be "domiciled" within the United States before their children can be entitled to birthright citizenship. And they contend that neither the children of unlawful entrants nor the children of lawful temporary visitors are domiciled in the United States.

I mean to establish two propositions in this post. First, there is no domicile rule—not as a matter of original public meaning. Second, if there were a domicile rule, it would not categorically exclude the children of unlawful entrants from citizenship. To be faithful to the relevant history, any such rule would entail case-by-case subjective inquiries into the intentions of millions of parents. The EO's exclusion of the children of all unlawful entrants from citizenship could not be sustained. Read More

Free Speech

Former Trump Advisor's Libel Lawsuit Against Retired Mixed Martial Arts Fighter Can Go Forward

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From Judge Jessica Clarke's opinion Monday in Delgado v. Sonnen (S.D.N.Y.):

Plaintiff Arlene Delgado is a lawyer and former senior advisor to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Plaintiff filed this action on March 1, 2024 alleging that Defendant Chael Sonnen, a retired mixed martial arts fighter who previously competed in the Ultimate Fighting Championship ("UFC"), defamed her while he was a guest on a podcast called Flagrant…. Plaintiff alleges that during Flagrant's March 7, 2023 podcast episode, Defendant Sonnen made false and defamatory remarks regarding Plaintiff's educational background and employment, and falsely claimed she "stalked" Sonnen such that she was banned from UFC venues. Below are Sonnen's statements in full context:

A President of the United States, in their absolute inner circle, had a phony, and I knew the phony. And I knew the phony because the phony had come after me and it got all the way to the chief legal officer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship that had to put a notice at every venue that we went to, to ban this person who was stalking me, and that person was on the inner circle of a President [elect] of the United States. So I have to reach to the president, of which I don't know, to let them know that this human being is not who they're claiming they are, and they're getting ready to set you up. Not to mention, you're going to look like a fool when it comes out that this person is not named, does not have the title, and did not go to the school that you're running around Hannity and Colmes and telling them that they are. And I did. I got it to the president who removed this person ….

Delgado sued, and the court concluded that some of her claims could survive defendants' motion to dismiss:

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Free Speech

Law Professors' Amicus Brief Supporting the Perkins Coie Law Firm in Challenge to Executive Order

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The brief, just filed yesterday in district court is here; I was pleased to be one of the very many signers. Here's the Summary of Argument:

The President's Order is a self-declared act of retribution that targets a law firm for representing clients and causes the President disfavors. In inflicting this retribution, the Order contradicts centuries of precedent safeguarding free speech, the right of association, and the right to petition. These precedents establish that the First Amendment "prohibits government officials from 'relying on the threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion … to achieve the suppression' of disfavored speech." Nat'l Rifle Ass'n v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 176 (2024) (quoting Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 67 (1963)). Targeting Perkins Coie for representing clients and espousing views the President dislikes is viewpoint discrimination, plain and simple.

The Order violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments as well. The Fifth and Sixth Amendments were designed to check executive power and to ensure a meaningful way to assert rights before a judicial authority. Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 61, 64–65 (1932). Forcing lawyers to bend to the preferences of federal officials robs clients of their right to counsel and introduces the very type of government interference in the administration of justice the Founders acted to prevent.

Finally, the Order threatens the rule of law. If the Order stands, it will be open season on lawyers who have dared to take on clients or causes the President or other officials don't like. This is no hypothetical threat. In the run-up to the election, the President posted on Truth Social that "WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law …. Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers …." Trump Threatens Long Prison Sentences for Those Who 'Cheat' in the Election if He Wins, PBS News (Sept. 8, 2024). More recently, the President has pledged that Perkins Coie is merely among the first of "a lot of law firms that we're going to be going after." Erin Mulvaney & C. Ryan Barber, Fear of Trump Has Elite Law Firms in Retreat, Wall St. J. (Mar. 9, 2025) (quoting President Trump).

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White Lion Reverses Fifth Circuit Again By Narrowly Reading Record And Question Presented

It is very easy to reverse a court when you exclude virtually every argument from consideration.

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Yesterday, I expressed frustration how the Court narrowly construed, and indeed reimagined, the record in Bondi v. VanDerStock. Worse still, the Court applied Salerno to reject a facial challenge to a regulation. This move amply rehabilitates Chevron. And why did the Court do this? In my jaundiced view, the Justices were looking for a narrow way to reverse the Fifth Circuit.

Another day, another reversal of the Fifth Circuit. This time, the Court unanimously remanded the en banc Fifth Circuit in FDA v. Wages and White Lion Investments, LLC. Justice Alito's majority opinion is striking in how narrowly it reads the record and the question presented.

For example, Justice Alito's opinion states:

In a footnote, the en banc majority also suggested thatthe FDA had violated a provision of the TCA's notice-and-comment requirements, see 21 U. S. C. §§387g(c)–(d), by imposing a "de facto ban on flavored e-cigarettes" through mass adjudicatory denials, 90 F. 4th, at 384, n. 5.

Suggested? Here is the footnote from Judge Oldham's en banc majority opinion:

FDA's categorical ban has other statutory problems. For example, the TCA states that FDA must follow notice-and-comment procedures before adopting a "tobacco product standard." See 21 U.S.C. § 387g(c)–(d). And Congress specifically called a ban on tobacco flavors a "tobacco product standard." See id. § 387g(a)(1)(A) (referring to tobacco flavors, "including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee, that is a characterizing flavor of the tobacco product or tobacco smoke"); see also id. § 387g(a)(2) (cross-referencing noticeand- comment obligation to revise flavor standards). FDA unquestionably failed to follow § 387g's notice-and-comment obligations before imposing its de facto ban on flavored ecigarettes.

This is not a suggestion. It seems like a definitive statement of illegality. Is there really some new rule now that an issue not properly preserved unless it is raised in the body of an opinion? Or is this only a rule for circuits abutting the Gulf of America? It does seem different rules apply to the Fifth Circuit.

Justice Alito further argues that the notice-and-comment issue is only "touched on" in the Respondents' brief:

The question we agreed to decide is whether the FDA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in denying respondents' applications for premarket approval of their tobacco products. See Pet. for Cert. I. But before tackling that question, we briefly address as a preliminary matter an argument that is touched on in respondents' brief: namely, that either the APA or the TCA required the FDA to use notice-and-comment rulemaking to set out the requirements that must be met in a premarket tobacco product application.

There is an entire free-standing section in the Table of Contents, and two full pages of the brief (pp. 47-49), focusing on the notice-and-comment issue. What the heck does it take to squarely raise an issue?

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Tariffs

Looking for Plaintiffs to Challenge Trump's IEEPA Tariffs in Court

The Liberty Justice Center and I are looking for appropriate plaintiffs to bring this type of case. LJC (a prominent public interest law firm) can represent them pro bono.

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I have previously written about how Trump's abusive use of the  International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to start a massive trade war can be challenged under the major questions and nondelegation doctrines. See also this analysis by Georgetown law Prof. Jennifer Hillman.

The Liberty Justice Center, a prominent public interest law firm with extensive experience litigating economic liberties issues, is looking for an appropriate plaintiff (or group of plaintiffs) to file this kind of case. They can provide representation pro bono, for the right type of client. LJC has litigated and won many important cases related to economic freedom, most notably Janus v. AFSCME (2018), a major Supreme Court decision vindicating the rights of public employees to be free of mandatory union dues.  I myself will assist LJC, as may be needed - also on a pro bono basis.

LJC Senior Counsel Jeffrey Schwab has authorized me to post this description of the types of plaintiffs they are looking for:

I think the ideal client would be a privately-held company affected by the tariffs that imports materials directly from one of the countries subject to the tariffs imposed by Trump under the IEEPA. The company doesn't have be considered a small business, but since I suspect many small businesses will be disproportionately harmed by the tariffs, that may be an ideal plaintiff. We may also be able to represent a business that imports goods through a third party like a wholesaler. But a business that directly imports goods would be ideal because it would make it easier to get standing. We would also not be opposed to representing more than one plaintiff, but I think the max would be 4 or 5.

Trump has imposed IEEPA tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and tariffs on many more countries are likely imminent. If you are a business owner or representative of one who  fits the description above and wishes to pursue this issue, please contact Jeffrey Schwab, or myself.

 

Pardons

Pardoning Corporations (Apropos President Trump's Pardon of BitMEX)

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The Hill (Kimberly Wehle) reported yesterday:

On Friday, Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals and a related cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.

BitMEX solicits and takes orders for trades in derivatives tied to the value of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Last summer, BitMEX entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for having operated without a legitimate anti-money laundering program. Prior to August 2020, customers could register to trade with BitMEX anonymously, providing only verified email addresses.

As it happens, there's a forthcoming Comment by Brandon Stras in the University of Chicago Law Review on "Pardoning Corporations." The Abstract:

Though the Pardon Clause could be interpreted to include or exclude corporate offenses, overlooked history suggests the broader interpretation is the more plausible one. The Clause codified a power that had existed for centuries in England. And corporations were often pardoned at common law—including the Massachusetts Bay Company. This tradition lasted for hundreds of years, and it is the backdrop against which the Framers drafted the Pardon Clause. Even following the Founding, people continued to understand that the pardon power stretched to corporations. Since that time, however, institutional memory has faded.

The President could condition forgiveness on corporate compliance programs or on donations to his political campaign. He could offer pardons to foreign companies to sweeten relations with other countries. He could effectively abolish corporate criminal liability during his terms, at least at the federal level, even for prosecutions initiated by independent agencies. He could pardon his own companies to protect them from prosecution. Or he might even pardon companies that bribed him. Given the sweeping pardon power in Article II, all these decisions fall within the President's discretion. He does not even need to wait for a company to apply.

Some of these consequences are startling, but Congress can limit the pardon power's effects in two ways. First, Congress can refuse to appropriate refunds of pardoned fines. At the time of writing, Congress has not appropriated such refunds for individuals or companies. That decision denies people reprieve from the most common, and often most consequential, punishments imposed on companies. Second, Congress can repeal statutes that impose corporate criminal liability and replace them with unpardonable civil infractions, depriving the President of offenses to pardon.

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Free Speech

Important New Professional-Client Speech Decision from the Third Circuit

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From Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting LLC v. Platkin, decided yesterday by Judge Stephanos Bibas, joined by Judges Anthony Scirica and Cheryl Krause:

The marketplace of ideas is not just a metaphor. Many Americans, from journalists to playwrights to therapists, speak for a living. Laws that bar these professionals from earning money on that speech limit their ability to speak and so must survive First Amendment scrutiny. New Jersey recently passed one such law, banning charging for some advice on how to claim veterans benefits. Because this law likely burdens speech, yet the District Court thought otherwise and so denied a preliminary injunction, we will vacate and remand….

The majority opinion began by concluding that professional speech, including paid speech, is likely presumptively protected by the First Amendment:

Professional services delivered by speaking or writing are speech. Veterans Guardian … advises clients about how to claim benefits: what disabilities to claim, what evidence to include, and how to fill out forms. That advice is likely speech. See Upsolve, Inc. v. James (S.D.N.Y. 2022) (distinguishing conduct of filing motions from speech of offering legal advice)….

[And] laws that ban charging for speech burden the right to speak. Supreme Court cases establish this. See United States v. Nat'l Treasury Emps. Union (1995); Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd. (1991). Common sense agrees. Someone who cannot earn money from speaking has less incentive to speak and so will speak less. Indeed, many canonical examples of protected speech involve professionals speaking for pay: think of novelists, speechwriters, and newspaper columnists….

More importantly (because the matter is less well-settled), the panel concluded that "there is no separate category of professional speech":

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Campus Free Speech

AFA Statement on Speech Rights of Foreign Nationals

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After several high-profile examples of university students having their authorization to study in the United States revoked and of international scholars being turned away at the border, the Academic Freedom Alliance has released a statement on the deportation of foreign scholars and students. There are clearly circumstances in which foreign nationals can and should be expelled from the country, but the administration's actions have had the effect of dampening lawful but politically disfavored speech on American college campuses and pose a serious threat to the international academic community.

From the statement:

Foreign students and scholars who enter in the United States, temporarily or indefinitely, do so on a conditional basis, and if they violate the conditions of their lawful presence in the country they can properly be removed. It is imperative that the permission of foreign students and scholars to enter or remain in the country be revoked only for the proper reasons, which do not include the mere expression of controversial scholarly, political, or social views. If foreign scholars and students are going to be able to live and work in the United States, to express themselves freely in public and to engage in the ordinary activities of scholarship and teaching, they must be confident that their status will not be put at risk by their engaging, alongside other members of the academic community, in the lawful expression of ideas that those with political power happen to find controversial.

We call on American government officials to clearly state that international students and scholars will not be removed from the country simply for engaging in lawful expressive activities, whether personal or professional. We call upon American government officials to clearly state the factual basis and legal rationale when visas are revoked. A climate of uncertainty is itself a threat to the free exchange of ideas on American university campuses. It is imperative that the government not only refrain from removing individuals from the country for exercising First Amendment liberties but also credibly reassure the scholarly community that the immigration laws will not be used to stifle First Amendment protected speech.

Read the whole thing here.

Politics

Harlan Virtual Supreme Court Round of Four

Ten teams of high school students presented oral arguments on Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton.

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The topic for the 13th Annual Harlan InstituteVirtual Supreme Court competition is Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Yesterday, the top four teams presented oral arguments. The Championship Round will be held at the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute on May 1, 2025 between Teams #20601 and 20094.

Round of 4 Match #1

Team #20601 v. Team #20094

Round of 4 Match #2

Team #20133 v. Team #20129

Free Speech

School Contractor Allegedly Fired for Complaining About Drag Show for Students in Grades 7-12

A federal court has allowed the contractor's claim to go forward, denying defendants' motion to dismiss (though of course the facts remain to be ascertained at trial or summary judgment).

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From Monday's decision by Judge Edmond Chang (N.D. Ill.) in Lopez v. Fasana:

[According to the Complaint,] April Lopez worked at Disney II Magnet High School as a chief engineer from October 2021 through April 2023. Although the school takes the name "High School," the school teaches students from Grade 7 through 12. She was not a direct employee of the Chicago Public Schools system; instead, she worked for Eco-Alpha, a subcontractor of Jones Lang LaSalle (the giant real-estate services company).

During the early morning of April 28, 2023, before students arrived at school, Lopez saw a poster for a drag show for students posted in a hallway. She said to one of her colleagues, "I cannot get on board with that." Vice Principal Matt Fasana overheard the comment and "expressed anger at her point of view." Then, later that morning, Lopez approached Fasana and directly "expressed her concern over having a drag show at a school with children as young as 12."

That conversation allegedly triggered a series of reports up the command chain—all on the same day, April 28—eventually leading to Eco-Alpha terminating Lopez's employment….

Lopez sued the school officials, and the court allowed the case to go forward:

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Executive Power

"The Originalist Case Against Overturning Humphrey's Executor," by Lorianne Updike Schulzke

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I was talking to Prof. Lorianne Updike Schulzke (who teaches at Northern Illinois and is visiting this semester at Yale), and she brought up some interesting thoughts on the President's supposed inherent constitutional power to dismiss independent agency officials. She was kind enough to pass along this quick summary; I'm not an expert on the field myself, but I thought it was worth passing along in turn:

Serious Originalists should pause before solidifying President Trump's control over independent agencies by overturning Humphrey's Executor. Yesterday the DC Circuit stayed the reinstatement of Gwynne A. Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), potentially under the theory that Seila Law throws Humphrey's Executor into doubt.

Yet as I demonstrate in a paper just out in the Connecticut Law Review, Un-fathering the Constitution, the historical grounding of Seila Law in Madison's vision of executive removal is tenuous at best. In fact, more careful historical analysis demonstrates that Madison's vision should not dominate executive removal.

Further, this history shows that the original Congress anticipated a role for itself in limiting the president's removal power. If this history is to have any sway (and Originalism dictates that it should), Humphrey's Executor should be kept intact and greater power over independent agencies should not be granted to the Trump administration.

Congress began creating independent agencies in the 1880s, when they established the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroads. Since then, the President has made top appointments for such agencies, and Congress lower appointments according to Article II, Sec. 2 of the Constitution. Under Humphrey's Executor, the appointees who run these agencies have a quasi-legislative role (being set up by Congress), and therefore the president's ability to control and fire them is limited.

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