Government Likely Violated First Amendment in Getting Apple and Google to Block ICE Sightings Content, Court Holds

From yesterday’s decision by Judge Jorge Alonso (N.D. Ill.) in Rosado v. Bondi:

Plaintiff Kassandra Rosado runs a Facebook group called “ICE Sightings – Chicagoland” and Plaintiff Kreisau Group runs a phone application called “Eyes Up.” Both allow users to post videos and information regarding ICE activity. Plaintiffs allege that Defendants coerced Facebook into disabling the Chicagoland Facebook group and coerced Apple into removing Eyes Up. Plaintiffs contend that this violated their First Amendment rights ….

Plaintiff Kassandra Rosado created “ICE Sightings – Chicagoland” in January 2025 as a Facebook group for people to post videos and information regarding ICE activity. On October 12, 2025, social media influencer Laura Loomer posted a link to the Facebook group and tagged Pamela Bondi and Kristi Noem. On October 14, Bondi posted: “Today following outreach from [the DOJ], Facebook removed a large group that was being used to dox and target [ICE] agents in Chicago.” Also on October 14, Defendant Noem posted: “Today, thanks to [the DOJ], Facebook removed a large page being used to dox and threaten our ICE agents in Chicago.”

Around October 14, Facebook disabled the group and notified Rosado that the group “went against the Community Standards multiple times.” …

Plaintiff Kreisau Group created “Eyes Up” in August 2025 as a phone application for people to post videos and information regarding ICE activity. Around October 2, 2025, Apple removed several apps that shared information regarding ICE activity, including ICEBlock, Red Dot, and Eyes Up. Speaking to Fox News on October 2, Defendant Bondi stated: “We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store – and Apple did so.” And on October 8 Bondi made a public statement that “we had Apple and Google take down the ICEBlock apps.”

Apple informed Kreisau Group that Apple had removed Eyes Up from the App Store after receiving “information” from “law enforcement” that the app violated Apple’s guidelines. Apple stated that the app violated guideline 1.1.1, which prohibits “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content.”

The court concluded that plaintiffs had standing to challenge the government action:

“[A] federal court cannot redress injury that results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Murthy v. Missouri (2024). In other words, Plaintiffs must show that the injuries are “likely traceable to government-coerced enforcement of Facebook’s [and Apple’s] policies rather than to Facebook’s [and Apple’s] independent judgment.” The Court finds that Plaintiffs have shown that their injuries are likely traceable to government-coerced enforcement for the following reasons.

First, Facebook had previously reviewed the Chicagoland group, and Apple had previously reviewed Eyes Up. In both cases, Facebook and Apple had determined that the content met their requirements. {Prior to October 14, out of thousands of posts and tens of thousands of comments made in the Chicagoland Facebook group, Facebook’s moderators found and removed only five posts and comments that purportedly violated Facebook’s guidelines. When Facebook removed those posts, Facebook advised Rosado that the posts were “participant violations” that “don’t hurt your group” and that “groups aren’t penalized when members or visitors break the rules without admin approval.” Additionally, Facebook’s policies do not call for disabling groups if just a few members post prohibited conduct. Rather, Facebook’s policies call for disabling groups when the group moderator either creates prohibited content or affirmatively approves such content….

Apple had previously and independently reviewed Eyes Up in August 2025. During that previous review, Eyes Up was already available on its website, and Apple had knowledge of the purpose of Eyes Up, of actual videos available on it, and how it worked. Apple had flagged some unrelated issues, which Kreisau Group resolved before Apple approved the app. And at that time, Apple raised no concern that Eyes Up contained “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content” in violation of guideline 1.1.1….}

Second, Facebook and Apple changed their positions and removed the content immediately after Defendants contacted them about it. And third, Defendants made public statements taking credit for the fact that Facebook and Apple had removed the content….

And the court held that the government’s action likely violated the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court has established that “[g]overnment officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.” NRA v. Vullo (2024). “To state a claim that the government violated the First Amendment through coercion of a third party, a plaintiff must plausibly allege conduct that, viewed in context, could be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress the plaintiff’s speech.” Critically, when considering the government’s threats:

[T]he fact that a public-official defendant lacks direct regulatory or decisionmaking authority over a plaintiff, or a third party that is publishing or otherwise disseminating the plaintiff’s message, is not necessarily dispositive…. What matters is the distinction between attempts to convince and attempts to coerce. A public-official defendant who threatens to employ coercive state power to stifle protected speech violates a plaintiff’s First Amendment rights, regardless of whether the threatened punishment comes in the form of the use (or, misuse) of the defendant’s direct regulatory or decisionmaking authority over the plaintiff, or in some less-direct form.

Backpage.com v. Dart (7th Cir. 2015). As the Seventh Circuit found in Backpage, although the defendant lacked “authority to take any official action” and did not “directly threaten the [third parties] with an investigation or prosecution,” the defendant still engaged in coercion where he “demand[ed]” rather than “request[ed],” and where he “intimat[ed]” that the third parties “may be criminal accomplices” if they failed to comply.

Here, Bondi and Noem did exactly that. They reached out to Facebook and Apple and demanded, rather than requested, that Facebook and Apple censor Plaintiff’s speech. See R. 10-4 at 29 (emphasis added) (“‘We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store – and Apple did so,’ Bondi said in a statement to Fox News Digital.”); R. 10-4 at 36 (emphasis added) (Loomer posting on social media that “DOJ source tells me … they have contacted Facebook … to tell them they need to remove these ICE tracking pages.”); R. 10-4 at 65 (Noem posting on social media that “[p]latforms like Facebook must be PROACTIVE [sic] in stopping the doxxing of our [ICE] law enforcement.”).

Bondi and Noem also intimated that Facebook and Apple may be subject to prosecution for failing to comply with Bondi and Noem’s demands. For example, after stating that we “had Apple and Google take down the ICEBlock apps,” Bondi further stated: “We’re not going to stop at just arresting the violent criminals we can see in the streets.” And in the same social media post where Noem wrote that “[p]latforms like Facebook must be PROACTIVE in stopping the doxxing of our [ICE] law enforcement,” she added: “We will prosecute those who dox our agents to the fullest extent of the law.”

Although these statements may not be direct threats to prosecute Facebook and Apple, they are intimations of a threat. And thinly veiled threats such as these constitute sufficient evidence on which Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim. See Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963) (“People do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around.”)….

The court has not yet decided on the precise terms of the preliminary injunction, but ordered plaintiffs’ counsel to submit a draft injunction by Wednesday “after discussing the form of the order with Defendants’ counsel.”

Note that the government didn’t even argue that plaintiffs’ content fit within any First Amendment exception or was otherwise constitutionally unprotected.

Colin P. McDonell, James C. Grant, Hannah M. Abbott, and Cary Davis (FIRE) represent plaintiffs.