Chief U.S.District Judge James Boasberg has temporarily halted the Trump administration’s effort to deny visas to individuals it claims worked to perpetuate censorship against Americans.Boasberg handed down a decision earlier this month blocking the State Department from restricting visas for foreign officials and other foreign nationals considered responsible for or complicit in suppressing American free speech.
He found that, while the federal government has a "legitimate interest in responding when foreign officials use sovereign power to suppress protected expression in the United States," it is possible that the government is engaging in viewpoint discrimination, and thus violating the First Amendment, through its policy."The policy, at its core, does not burden all speech about platforms, all research into content moderation, or all advocacy about online harms," Boasberg wrote."It presses its enforcement thumb against one side of the scale: the view that platforms should do more to moderate content, label disinformation, restrict abuse, share data with researchers, or take responsibility for the harms their systems amplify."GOP LAWMAKERS URGE SUPREME COURT TO STRENGTHEN FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTIONS FOR STREET PREACHERSU.S.
District Judge James Boasberg is seen in an official portrait in Washington, D.C., on March 16, 2023.(Photo by Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images) ( )"The Government, in other words, has not set itself against everyone who speaks about platform governance.
It has set itself against those whose work favors more moderation rather than less," he added.The State Department’s policy followed a Biden-era controversy where the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which produced alleged "blacklists" of certain news websites, received funding from the federal government.Conservatives have argued that GDI’s ratings contributed to advertisers withholding revenue from conservative outlets and that federal support for the org...