A nonprofit that supports online speech restrictions is suing the Trump administration for sanctioning people who pushed platforms to delete speech. The case landed in a D.C. courtroom on Wednesday and the irony runs deep.
The Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) wants a federal judge to block a State Department visa policy announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in May 2025.
The policy allows the US to deny entry, revoke visas, or deport foreign nationals the government considers “complicit in censoring Americans.”
CITR filed for a preliminary injunction, and Chief Judge James Boasberg heard oral arguments on May 13 in Coalition for Independent Technology Research v. Rubio.
The five people sanctioned under this policy in December 2025 are not random academics. Thierry Breton helped build the EU’s Digital Services Act, which compels American tech companies to delete speech Europeans find objectionable.
Imran Ahmed runs the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which has campaigned to get accounts banned from platforms.
Clare Melford runs the Global Disinformation Index, which compiled advertiser blacklists to financially punish news outlets it decided were spreading “disinformation.”
Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg co-founded HateAid, a German group pushing legal action against speech it calls “digital violence.”
Rubio accused them of leading “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”
CITR’s attorney Carrie DeCell argued that “the government is subjecting CITR members and other non-citizens to exclusion, detention and deportation simply for reporting on speech on social media and the harms that might arise from it, and advocating for different content moderation policies and other policies that might govern internet platforms.”
Hellbound and Down 