Above photo: U.S. Federal Courthouse in New York City. Flickr/Haydn Blackey.
Here is a rundown of all of the lawsuits that have been filed aimed at halting the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on constitutional rights when it comes to Palestine.
According to a tracker developed by Just Security, there have been at least 146 legal challenges to Trump administration actions since he took office.
Several of those have dealt with the White House’s war on Palestine activists.
In recent weeks, students, faculty, and legal organizations have launched multiple lawsuits aimed at halting the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on Palestinian protesters and holding universities accountable for their complicity.
Here are some of the legal efforts that we’ve seen so far.
Taal V. Trump
District Court, N.D. New York
On March 15, two Cornell graduate students and a Cornell professor sued the Trump administration. Cornell professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi, and Cornell graduate students Sriram Parasurama and Momodou Taal filed the legal action with support from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and are seeking an injunction against Trump’s Executive Orders Numbers 14161 and 14188, which authorize deportation over protected speech.
The school threatened Taal with suspension last fall after he participated in a protest against the genocide in Gaza. A suspension would have meant that his F-1 visa status would have been revoked. Cornell eventually backed down and allowed Taal to remain an enrolled student, but he has been barred from campus since last September.
“I think ever since [October 7], I’ve been a visible face for the for what’s happening on campus in terms of I’ve been speaking at rallies, holding teach-ins, I have an online presence as well. I feel like these have all contributed to making me a target,” Taal told Mondoweiss at time. “I think what the new president [Michael Kotlikoff] is trying to do is trying to break the movement on campus.”
“I keep saying that these repressive tactics cannot be divorced from the issue itself,” he continued. “The issue is that it’s because it’s about Palestine because it, it touches the heart of university investment. It goes to the heart of for the heart of Empire.”
As soon as Taal revealed that he was involved in the lawsuit, the Trump administration targeted him. The day before the case was set to go to court, the government revoked his visa and began deportation proceedings.
“We anticipated some serious backlash, but not to this extent,” explains Taal in a recent interview with D. Musa Springer for Mondoweiss. “We thought that in a country that prides itself on the so-called rule of law, that claims to govern the world based on law and democracy, the courts would intervene before ICE and the FBI started showing up at people’s houses.”
“If ‘the people’ lack the right to criticize the U.S. government or listen to such criticisms, the First Amendment is a dead letter,” said lead counsel Eric Lee in a statement. “Only in a dictatorship can the president detain and banish individuals for criticizing his administration and its policies. The claim that such restrictions are needed to fight ‘terrorism’ is a lie aimed at chilling speech.”
“This lawsuit aims to vindicate the rights of all non-citizens and citizens in the U.S., but the courthouse is only one arena in this fight,” he continued. “We appeal to the population: stand up and exercise your First Amendment rights by actively and vigorously opposing the danger of dictatorship. As we prepare to mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution next year, recall the words from the Declaration of Independence: ‘That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”
The first procedural hearing for the lawsuit was held on March 25.
American Association Of University Professors V. Rubio
District Court, D. Massachusetts
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) are suing President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons over the administration’s “ideological-deportation policy.” The suit alleges that Trump’s strategy violates the First Amendment by targeting protected speech.
The legal action also argues that the policy violates the Fifth Amendment, which ensures due process and ensures a “fair warning as to what speech and association the government believes to be grounds for arrest, detention and deportation.”
The organizations are being represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Ahilan Arulanantham, and Zimmer, and Citron & Clarke LLP.
“By design, the agencies’ policy has created a climate of repression and fear on university campuses,” reads the complaint. “Out of fear that they might be arrested and deported for lawful expression and association, some noncitizen students and faculty have stopped attending public protests or resigned from campus groups that engage in political advocacy.”
“Others have declined opportunities to publish commentary and scholarship, stopped contributing to classroom discussions, or deleted past work from online databases and websites,” it continues. “Many now hesitate to address political issues on social media, or even in private texts. The agencies’ policy, in other words, is accomplishing its purpose: it is terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights in the past, intimidating them from exercising those rights now, and silencing political viewpoints that the government disfavors.”
“The Trump administration is going after international scholars and students who speak their minds about Palestine, but make no mistake: they won’t stop there,” said the AAUP’s Todd Wolfson in a statement. They’ll come next for those who teach the history of slavery or who provide gender-affirming health care or who research climate change or who counsel students about their reproductive choices. We all have to draw a line together—as the old labor movement slogan says: an injury to one is an injury to all.”
When asked about the case by the New York Times, the State Department said by email that “as a general matter, we do not comment on ongoing or pending litigation.”
American Association Of University Professors V. United States Department Of Justice
District Court, S.D. New York
Two unions representing professors and educators are suing the Trump administration over its decision to revoke $400 million in authorized grants and contracts to Columbia University.
“This action challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented effort to overpower a university’s academic autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed by American Association of University Professors and the American Federation of Teachers in US District Court for New York’s Southern District on March 25.
“Columbia is the testing ground for the Trump administration’s tactic to force universities to yield to its control,” said lead counsel Orion Danjuma in a statement. “We are bringing this lawsuit to protect higher education from unlawful government censorship and political repression.”
The two groups are being represented by the nonprofit organization Protect Democracy.
The Trump administration claims that their move was motivated by a desire to protect Jewish students at Columbia.
“Since October 7, Jewish students have faced relentless violence, intimidation, and anti-Semitic harassment on their campuses – only to be ignored by those who are supposed to protect them,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus. Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”
The revocation is a clear attempt to widen the crackdown on Palestine activism, as Columbia has been at the forefront of the movement since students launched the first Gaza encampment last spring.
Earlier this month the Trump administration sent Columbia an unsigned letter demanding a number of changes to their student discipline and admissions policies. The letter implied that Trump might revisit the financial freeze if the school complied with the list.
Columbia immediately agreed to the demands, which included suspending several students for occupying a campus hall last year and appointing a senior vice provost to oversee the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department.
Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said the moves were a way to “make every student, faculty and staff member safe and welcome on our campus.”
“Columbia faculty are utterly shocked and profoundly disappointed by the trustees’ capitulation to the extortionate behavior of the federal government,” Sheldon Pollock, the former head chair of Columbia’s Middle Eastern studies department told the New York Times after the school made the moves. “This is a shameful day in the history of Columbia.”
The suit was filed in the District Court of Massachusetts and assigned to Judge William G. Young. Proceedings are scheduled to begin soon.
Chung V. Trump
District Court, S.D. New York
On March 24, Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old legal permanent resident and student at Columbia University, sued the Trump administration for trying to deport her.
Just days after Chung attended a pro-Palestine sit-in on campus, ICE agents showed up at the home of Chung’s parents and then searched her dorm. The government also revoked her green card.
U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from detaining Chung until the court can hear the government’s arguments.
In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson claimed that Chung had “engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by N.Y.P.D. during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College. She is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws.”
Chung is being represented by the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) project, which is a legal clinic at CUNY.
“Like many thousands of students nationwide, Yunseo raised her voice against what is happening in Gaza and in support of fellow students facing unfair discipline,” said CLEAR co-director Naz Ahmad, who is one of Chung’s attorneys. “It can’t be the case that a straight-A student who has lived here most of her life can be whisked away and potentially deported, all because she dares to speak up.”
Buchwald’s order requires Trump’s attorneys to “provide sufficient advance notice” to Chung and her attorneys if they attempt to detain her under a different statute.
Both sides will begin litigating in the coming days.
Khalil V. Trump
District Court, S.D. New York
Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers are challenging ICE’s unlawful detention of their client. The recent Columbia graduate who was detained by agents in New York on March 8 and is currently in a Louisiana detention facility.
The Southern District Court of New York has ruled that this challenge be transferred to New Jersey, despite Trump’s efforts to move it to Louisiana. It’s one of two pending motions aimed at getting Khalil released. His attorneys are also calling on the court to issue a preliminary injunction that would immediately release him and prohibit the Trump administration from invoking the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act provision that they’re citing in this case.
“This is just the beginning, but it is a moment to celebrate,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Brett Max Kaufman in a statement. “The court’s ruling sends a critical message to courts across the country, who are sure to face similar unprecedented challenges to their authority in the days that come, that the judiciary must not shy from its constitutional role.
“And no judicial role is more important than acting as a check on executive abuses the Trump administration has made the defining feature of its first 60 days,” he continued. “After this first step, we will eagerly and aggressively seek to get Mahmoud out, bring him home, and then defend his and others’ right to speak freely about Palestine or any other issue without fear of detention and deportation.”
The U.S. government filed a second motion transfer the case to Louisiana on March 20, and a hearing is scheduled for March 28 in the District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Lawsuits in response to the repression of the Palestine movement have not been limited only to the Trump administration. Some have also targeted university over their treatment of student protesters and their compliance with government overreach.
UCLA Lawsuit
On March 20, Palestine activists sued UCLA for allegedly allowing pro-Israel counter-protesters to attack and terrorize a campus Gaza encampment last spring.
Robert Gardner, a UCLA alumnus with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and former external affairs director for the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter detailed the scene in an Op-Ed days after the incident:
On April 28, a racist, Zionist mob verbally and physically assaulted students who were calling for UCLA to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s genocide in Gaza that has killed over 34,000 Palestinians. The mob yelled the N-word and spat at Black students, called students “sub-human” and “dogs,” hoped for them to be raped and killed, and shoved students to the ground. Following the initial mob attack, Zionists continued their reign of terror the next several nights, unleashing mice and launching physical attacks against encampment barriers with switchblades.
But nothing could have prepared me for the shocking campaign of Zionist racial terror to come.
Late Tuesday night, I watched in horror for hours from home as another Zionist mob of outside agitators burned screaming students with projectiles. They beat students with metal bars, wooden planks and hammers as they were wailing in pain and left bloodied and bruised; assaulted students with tear gas and bear mace; and hit them with rocks and bottles. On top of that, I witnessed the most hateful and racist anti-Palestinian, Black, LGBTQ+ and Islamophobic hate speech I have ever heard.
UCLA security, administration and the media stood idly by.
The lawsuit notes that no counter-protesters were arrested, despite the fact that “police and private security watched from just a few yards away as the attack raged for hours.”
Recently a group of UC grad students put out a report detailing the police repression, relying on data compiled by Med Students for Justice in Palestine.
“There were over 200 arrests,” a student activist told Mondoweiss. “More than 10 degrees were withheld from students over protesting and a lot of students face significant financial difficulties due to work complications.”
“However, all the students I have spoken with have said they would do it again and again, regardless of the suppression,” they continued.
The complaint was filed on behalf of 35 activists, and it lists 20 members of the “rioting mob” as defendants. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages for their injuries.
Columbia Records Lawsuit
Mahmoud Khalil and seven current students at the school are suing to prevent the university from handing over private disciplinary records to a congressional committee.
Judge Aruba Subramanian temporarily blocked the school from disclosing the private records and began hearing arguments in the case this week.
The records were requested by the House Committee on Education and Workforce, which claims that “numerous antisemitic incidents” have occurred at Columbia.
The Committee previously targeted a number of university presidents over the Gaza protests at their school. The high-profile grillings led to multiple school leaders stepping down, including former Columbia president Minouche Shafik.
The lawsuit names Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong, Barnard College president Laura Ann Rosenbury; and Representative Tim Walberg (R-MI), the House Committee chairman.
“Our committee will continue its work to protect Jewish students and hold schools accountable for their failures to address rampant antisemitism on our college campuses,” said Walberg in a statement.
At a hearing on March 25, Judge Subramanian asked for the students’ lawyers and the Trump attorneys to submit any additional arguments by March 27, and indicated he would render a decision soon after.
Michael Arria is Mondoweiss’ U.S. correspondent. His work has appeared in In These Times, The Appeal, and Truthout. He is the author of Medium Blue: The Politics of MSNBC. Follow him on x at @michaelarria.