The creators of ICEBlock, a crowdsourcing app that used the public at large to track and document Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, have filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of illegally bullying tech platforms into removing the app from distribution by forcing them to maintain content policies that prevent sensitive information about immigration raids from appearing on their sites. The suit portrays the pressure campaign as unconstitutional “jawboning” that chilled protected speech and deprived users of information about government conduct.
The suit also says White House officials pressured Apple and other platforms to banish ICEBlock and similar tools, labeling them threats to Department of Homeland Security staff. Apple later removed ICEBlock and other apps that recorded or mapped immigration enforcement, such as the documentation project Eyes Up, according to the filing.
Developers Allege Unconstitutional Jawboning
At issue is whether government officials crossed the First Amendment line that separates persuasion from coercion. When senior government officials identify an app as dangerous and pair that message with investigations and threats of legal action, such actions do not constitute a content-neutral decision by a private company, the developers argue, but state-sponsored censorship.
Courts have long cautioned against being deputized as informal censors. In Backpage.com v. Dart, the Seventh Circuit concluded that a county sheriff violated the First Amendment when he sent letters to payment processors in an effort to cut off service to a website, stating that “the letters were an unconstitutional attempt to ‘silence protected speech.’” Previously, the Supreme Court had condemned government “advisories” that operated as de facto bans in Bantam Books v. Sullivan and observed in Norwood v. Harrison that the state may not induce private parties to do what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly.
The developers’ lawsuit also cites the state action doctrine, which holds that if officials sufficiently pressure or compel a platform to make a particular decision, it can be considered government action for purposes of constitutional law. Organizations like the Knight First Amendment Institute and the Electronic Frontier Foundation label this phenomenon a dangerous trend as public officials increasingly meddle in backroom content moderation discussions.
App Store Removals And Congressional Pressure
After the White House safety warnings, Apple removed ICEBlock and other tools for logging immigration enforcement. The action followed mounting pressure from the House Committee on Homeland Security and its oversight subcommittee, which had sent letters to Apple and Google notifying them that they were looking into apps that catalog DHS activities, according to the complaint.
Committee leaders said the tools could threaten officers’ safety and obstruct legitimate law enforcement efforts. Homeland Security leadership echoed those fears, and officials also threatened legal response against both news outlets publishing stories about ICE-tracking apps and the developer of the app ICEBlock when they did. Civil liberties advocates argue that this kind of reporting on public officials in public spaces is a central First Amendment activity that is regularly protected when it occurs free of obstruction or intimidation.
Compounding the stakes is the gatekeeping authority of app marketplaces. Apple has announced more than 1.8 million apps on the App Store, and iOS enjoys a majority share of active smartphones in the U.S., according to several market researchers. App removal from a dominant storefront can be pretty much the end of an app’s reach, so any government involvement in such a removal would be particularly momentous for speech rights.
Safety Claims Versus Public Accountability
Officials contend the apps are inciting attacks, essentially, on DHS personnel. But the Supreme Court’s test in Brandenburg v. Ohio requires so-called advocacy that is directed to inciting imminent lawless action, and that you’re intending such action and that it’s likely to happen as a result of your call for violence. The ICEBlock developers said their app was a way to record government action and issue alerts within the broader community, such as for legal defense services and oversight — activities that civil rights advocates say fall well within protected speech and petition activity.
There is authentic conflict here: the government has a good interest in protecting officer safety; the members of the public have a right to observe and record what looks like flagrant government activity. Courts and groups like the ACLU have long recognized the right to record police officers and other public officials in public spaces, so long as such recording doesn’t severely disrupt its subject or blatantly violate reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions.
Legal Landscape and What to Watch in This Case
Recent cases involving federal overtures to social media platforms raise the line drawing issue. In O’Handley v. Weber, the Ninth Circuit drew a line between government speech that was permissible and government coercion, ruling that a state official could tag posts without threatening punishment. Instead, Backpage v. Dart ruled that threats to intermediaries were out of bounds. And though the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri emphasized standing limits, it more or less left untouched the rule that coercive or very strong encouragement by government may infringe the First Amendment.
Anticipate the earliest litigation to center around evidence of pressure: who said what to which platform, whether threats of investigations or prosecutions were linked to compliance and how closely removals corresponded with government requests. Discovery about communications with the White House, Congress, DHS and app stores could reveal whether or not the platforms acted of their own accord or were unconstitutionally pressured.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to return ICEBlock to app stores and prevent officials from using their influence to have platforms tamp down similar tools. A decision in their favor could rein in secretive content-policing by politicians and clarify how far the government can go when “advising” private platforms. A defeat could indicate that generalized safety alerts and oversight inquiries with no explicit threats will be considered constitutionally kosher government speech.
Whatever the outcome of the case, it will contribute to a definition of the pragmatic limits for digital-based protest and accountability during an age when a handful of storefront owners run what we call the public square on our phones.
