Reagan Judge Stands Up to Bullying, Calls Americans to Overcome Division and Defend Constitution
Among the many people targeted for deportation by America’s new fascist regime this year are pro-Palestinian activists present in the U.S. on student visas. The American Association of University Professors and allies sued in March to stop that oppressive policy. Yesterday, The U.S District Court of Massachusetts ruled those deportations unconstitutional, as the First Amendment protects everyone present in the United States, citizen and visitor alike.
Judge William G. Young, age 85, appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, opened his 161-page ruling with an anonymous note he received in June, as he prepared for a two-week trial in July on what he called “perhaps the most important [case] ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court”:
19|JUNE 2025 TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS.... WHAT DO YOU HAVE ? Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution. Here's how that works out in a specific case —[Judge William G. Young, ruling, AAUP v. Rubio, Noem, et al., 2025.09.30, p. 1.]
That’s the bravest thing I’ve read all year.
The magnificent Constitution works out in this specific case this way:
“‘No law’ means ‘no law,’” Young said, referring to the text of the First Amendment, which in part states that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech” or “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Young ruled that the First Amendment could not draw on the Trump administration’s “invidious distinction” between citizens and non-citizens, which the judge said “is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence.”
“No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike,” he wrote.
“The president’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.”
Intimidating non-citizen students, Young noted in a footnote, was just one aspect of the Trump administration’s “full-throated assault on the First Amendment across the board under the cover of an unconstitutionally broad definition of Anti-Semitism” [Jacob Knutson, “Reagan-Appointed Judge Calls Out Trump’s ‘Full-Throated Assault on the First Amendment’,” Democracy Docket, 2025.09.30].
Judge Young recognizes that many Americans may ask “Why should we care about the free speech rights” of foreigners on our soil advocating for the rights of Palestinians, advocacy many Americans may find irrelevant or objectionable. He answers that rhetorical question on page 99:
The United States is a great nation, not because any of us say so. It is great because we still practice our frontier tradition of selflessness for the good of us all. Strangers go out of their way to help strangers when they see a need. In times of fire, flood, and national disaster, everyone pitches in to help people we’ve never met and first responders selflessly risk their lives for others. Hundreds of firefighters rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11 without hesitation desperate to find and save survivors. That’s who we are. And on distant battlefields our military “fought and died for the men [they] [100] marched among.” Frank Loesser, “The Ballad of Roger Young”, LIFE, 5 March 1945, at 117. Each day, I recognize (to paraphrase Lincoln again) that the brave men and women, living and dead, who have struggled in our Nation’s service have hallowed our Constitutional freedom far above my (or anyone’s) poor power to add or detract. The only Constitutional rights upon which we can depend are those we extend to the weakest and most reviled among us [Young, 2025.09.30, pp. 99–100].
Judge Young expresses deep concern that he may not be able to protect the rights of the weakest and most reviled or even the rest of us because of Trump’s pursuit of unchecked dictatorship. Judge Young frames his concerns around a quote from his wife:
“He seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead.”
Half admiring, half quizzical, a very wise woman — my wife — made this comment about our 47th President in an entirely different context. I quote it here because it so perfectly captures the public persona of President Trump, especially as it pertains to the issues presented in this case. A brief explanation will suffice.
- He seems to be winning.
Triumphalism is the very essence of the Trump brand. Often this is naught but hollow bragging: “my perfect administration,” wearing a red baseball cap in the presidential oval office emblazoned “Trump Was Right About Everything,” or most recently depicting himself as an officer in the First Cavalry Division. Unfortunately, this tends to obscure the very real and sweeping changes President Trump has wrought in his first year in office. If change is a mark of success, President Trump is the most successful president in history.
2. He ignores everything . . .
This is indubitably true. The Constitution, our civil laws, regulations, mores, customs, practices, courtesies — all of it; the President simply ignores it all when he takes it into his head to act. A broad swath of our people find this refreshing in what they may feel is an over regulated society. After all, lawyers seem to have a penchant for telling you what you can’t do. President Trump simply ignores them.
This is not to suggest that he is entirely lawless. He is not. As an experienced litigator he has learned that — at least on the civil side of our courts — neither our Constitution nor laws enforce themselves, and he can do most anything until an aggrieved person or entity will stand up and say him “Nay,” i.e. take him to court. Now that he is our duly elected President after a full and fair election, he not only enjoys broad immunity from any personal liability, Trump v. United States, 144 S.Ct. 2312 (2024), he is prepared to deploy all the resources of the nation against obstruction. Daunting prospect, isn’t it?
Small wonder then that our bastions of independent unbiased free speech — those entities we once thought unassailable — have proven all too often to have only Quaker guns. Behold President Trump’s successes in limiting free speech — law firms cower, institutional leaders in higher education meekly appease the President, media outlets from huge conglomerates to small niche magazines mind the bottom line rather than the ethics of journalism.
3. …and he keeps bullying on.
Whether it’s social media, print, or television, President Trump is the master communicator of our time. His speech dominates today’s American idiom. Indeed, it may be said to define it. It is triumphal, transactional, imperative, bellicose, and coarse. It seeks to persuade — not through marshaling data driven evidence, science, or moral suasion, but through power.
While the President naturally seeks warm cheering and gladsome, welcoming acceptance of his views, in the real world he’ll settle for sullen silence and obedience. What he will not countenance is dissent or disagreement. He recognizes, of course, that there are legislative and judicial branches to our government, co-equal even to a unitary Presidency. He meets dissent from his orders in those other two branches by demonizing and disparaging the speakers, sometimes descending to personal vitriol.
Dissent elsewhere among our people is likewise disfavored, often in colorful scurrilous terms. All this the First Amendment capaciously and emphatically allows.
When he drifts off into calling people “traitors” and condemning them for “treason,” however, he reveals an ignorance of the crime and the special burden of proof it requires. More important, such speech is not protected by the First Amendment; it is defamatory. In his official capacity as President, however, President Trump enjoys broad immunity from any civil liability. Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982).
4. Retribution
Everything above in this section is necessary background to frame the problem this President has with the First Amendment. Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with “retribution.” “I am your retribution,” he thundered famously while on the campaign trail. Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment. The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech [Young, 2025.09.30, pp. 150–157].
Judge Young says the President’s dogged bullying and active ignorance of the Constitution, as well as his own concern for protecting the First Amendment rights of defendants and plaintiffs alike, complicate his continuing work to find a remedy for the Administration’s unjust deportations and chilling of speech.
Judge Young recalls a quote from Governor Ronald Reagan’s 1967 inaugural speech and a question for all of us: Will we live up to those words?
Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.
I first heard these words of President Reagan’s back in 2007 when my son quoted them in the Law Day celebration speech at the Norfolk Superior Court. I was deeply moved and hold these words before me as a I discharge judicial duties. As I’ve read and re-read the record in this case, listened widely, and reflected extensively, I’ve come to believe that President Trump truly understands and appreciates the full import of President Reagan’s inspiring message –- yet I fear he has drawn from it a darker, more cynical message. I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.
Is he correct? [Young, 2025.09.30, pp. 159–160].
Judge Young concludes his ruling with a brave invitation to the writer of the ominous anonymous postcard he cited on page 1:
I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for writing. It shows you care. You should.
Sincerely & respectfully, Bill Young
P.S. The next time you’re in Boston [the postmark on the card is from the Philadelphia area] stop in at the Courthouse and watch your fellow citizens, sitting as jurors, reach out for justice. It is here, and in courthouses just like this one, both state and federal, spread throughout our land that our Constitution is most vibrantly alive, for it is well said that “Where a jury sits, there burns the lamp of liberty.”
Judge Young’s invitation is open to all of us. Watch the courts in action. Respect the work of judges. Put division aside and fight for and defend constantly the fragile freedom we enjoy by the grace not of a king but of a Constitution.
And recognize that, whatever remedy he may issue from the bench, Judge Young is saying that the real remedy is us.