A Biden-appointed federal judge in California has dealt a significant blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke the visas of foreign students linked to pro-Palestinian protests on American campuses, ruling that the administration’s actions violated the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Noël Wise, sitting in the Northern District of California, issued a 90-page opinion on Friday siding with The Stanford Daily and two unnamed international student journalists who claimed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visa revocations had a ‘chilling’ effect on their speech.
Judge Wise, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Joe Biden in the lame-duck period, ruled that the provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act used by the administration to revoke the legal status of these students are unconstitutional as applied to protected speech. The law had been invoked under national-security and foreign-policy authorities to remove individuals whose presence, in the government’s view, harms U.S. foreign policy.
The ruling comes after two years of intense debate over how to handle foreign nationals participating in campus protests related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, universities across the United States saw a wave of encampments, building seizures, and protests, some of which involved rhetoric that Jewish students and others found deeply threatening. There were reports of masked activists storming an Israeli history class, distributing flyers depicting a boot crushing a Star of David, and chants of ‘from the river to the sea.’ At Columbia University, protest leaders praised what they called ‘violent resistance’ and the October 7 massacre itself. Jewish students reported being told they were not welcome on campus.
Administration’s Position: A Privilege, Not a Right
President Donald Trump, shortly after taking office, stated that resident aliens who joined what he described as ‘pro-jihadist protests’ would be found and deported. Secretary Rubio echoed that sentiment, arguing that a visa is a privilege, not a constitutional entitlement to run a political operation against U.S. foreign policy.
Rubio personally signed off on several high-profile cases. Among them: Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder who helped lead Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, whose visa was pulled after she co-authored a pro-Palestinian op-ed. The Gateway Pundit reported earlier that ICE had arrested Öztürk, who later left the United States for Turkey after a prolonged deportation battle. Khalil’s case saw an earlier ruling by an Obama-appointed judge that blocked his immediate deportation; in April, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a final removal order against him after rejecting his attempt to dismiss the case.
The administration’s stance has been consistent: if the government had known what these individuals intended to do on U.S. soil, they would never have received visas in the first place. Judge Wise, however, characterized the administration’s actions as a ‘campaign of speech-chilling retribution.’
Judge’s Background Draws Scrutiny
Critics have pointed to Judge Wise’s background as evidence of bias. Prior to her federal appointment, she served as a judge on the Alameda County Superior Court and had written a 2020 essay in The Atlantic complaining that President Trump’s judicial appointees were ‘overwhelmingly white and male’ and ‘don’t look like America.’ Republicans flagged that article during her confirmation, but Democrats pushed her through anyway.
In her ruling, Wise offered a philosophical defense of free speech, writing: ‘You can simultaneously hate the content of a person’s speech and love the country that cherishes the freedom to allow it.’
The ruling is being seen as a major victory for advocates of free speech on campus, but it is likely to face an appeal from the Trump administration, which has argued that national security and foreign policy considerations must take precedence when it comes to visa decisions.
Source: www.thegatewaypundit.com — https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/biden-appointed-california-judge-rules-trump-admin-cant/