Judges defend free speech with force: Powerful rulings revive First Amendment ideals

As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary this year, these opinions deserve to be read not only in law schools but in high schools, not only in courtrooms but in newsrooms. They remind us that the First Amendment’s greatest defenders have always been those willing to speak plainly about what freedom of expression requires — and what its loss would mean.”

Stuart N. Brotman, Digital Media Laureate at The Media Institute

Something extraordinary is happening in federal courthouses across the country. At a time when free expression is under fire from multiple directions, a remarkable group of judges is responding not merely with legal rulings, but with prose that rises to the occasion — writing opinions that channel the moral clarity of U.S Supreme Court Justices Louis D. Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes for a new generation.

Having spent decades participating in First Amendment cases and advising presidential administrations on both sides of the aisle, I cannot recall a period when federal judges have written with such literary force and constitutional conviction. What makes this moment even more striking is that the most powerful voices are coming from judges appointed by Republican presidents — underscoring that defending free expression is not, and must never become, a partisan enterprise.

Consider Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee in the District of Massachusetts. His 161-page opinion last September in AAUP v. Rubio — addressing the deportation of noncitizen students and faculty for their political speech — opened with a gesture no law school textbook could have anticipated. He reproduced an anonymous threatening postcard: “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS… WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” Beneath it, Judge Young typed his reply: “Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution.”

This is not boilerplate judicial language. That is a judge speaking directly to the American people about what is at stake. Young declared that “’No law’ means ‘no law’” — invoking the plain text of the First Amendment carved in New Hampshire granite on the exterior of his own courthouse. He concluded by reaching for Justice Brandeis' immortal concurrence in Whitney v. California: “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”

In February 2026, Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, a George W. Bush appointee in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, issued her own unforgettable opinion. Ordering the restoration of slavery exhibits removed from the President’s House in Philadelphia, Judge Rufe opened with Orwell: “As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims — to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.” That she delivered this ruling on George Washington’s birthday was eloquence all its own.

Then there is Judge Richard J. Leon, another Bush appointee, who that same month blocked the Pentagon from punishing Senator Mark Kelly for a video urging troops to refuse illegal orders. Leon quoted Bob Dylan — “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows” — before declaring that the government had “trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.” 

Rather than trying to shrink veterans’ speech rights, Leon wrote, Hegseth “might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired servicemembers have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our Nation over the past 250 years. If so, they will more fully appreciate why the Founding Fathers made free speech the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights!”

What unites Young, Rufe, and Leon is not ideology or political party affiliation.  Their opinions in these cases share an understanding that the First Amendment demands judges write not just for lawyers and appellate panels, but for the nation itself.

These judges are drawing on Orwell and Dylan, on Brandeis and the Founders, on the raw moral vocabulary of democratic self-governance. They are doing what the best judicial writing has always done: translating constitutional principles into language that ordinary citizens can feel in their bones.

As we celebrate America’s 250th anniversary this year, these opinions deserve to be read not only in law schools but in high schools, not only in courtrooms but in newsrooms. They remind us that the First Amendment’s greatest defenders have always been those willing to speak plainly about what freedom of expression requires — and what its loss would mean.

The federal judiciary is having its finest First Amendment hour. The rest of us should be paying attention.

Stuart N. Brotman is Digital Media Laureate at The Media Institute and the author of “Free Expression Under Fire: Defending Free Speech and Free Press Across the Political Spectrum.” He can be reached at snbrotman@gmail.com.