The developer of ICEBlock, an iPhone app that anonymously tracks the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, has sued the Trump administration for free speech violations after Apple removed the service from its app store under demands from the White House.
The suit, filed on Monday in federal court in Washington, asks a judge to declare that the administration violated the First Amendment when it threatened to criminally prosecute the app's developer and pressured Apple to make the app unavailable for download, which the tech company did in October.
Following Apple ejecting ICEBlock, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that "we reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so."
Lawyer Noam Biale, who filed the suit against the administration, said Bondi's remarks show the government illegally pressuring a private company to suppress free speech.
"We view that as an admission that she engaged in coercion in her official role as a government official to get Apple to remove this app," Biale said in an interview with NPR.
The Justice Department did not return a request for comment, but Trump administration officials have said the app puts the lives of ICE agents in danger.
When reached for comment, Apple also did not respond. The lawsuit, which does not name Apple, says the tech giant bowed in the face of political pressure.
"For what appears to be the first time in Apple's nearly fifty-year history, Apple removed a U.S.-based app in response to the U.S. government's demands," according to the suit.
Developer calls immigration crackdown 'abhorrent'
Joshua Aaron, the Austin, Texas-based developer of ICEBlock, said he launched the app as a way to empower those opposed to Trump's immigration crackdown.
"It was just the best idea I had to do everything I could to fight back against what was going on," Aaron said in an interview, describing Trump's immigration enforcement blitz as "abhorrent."
The app allows people to report an ICE agent sighting within a 5 mile radius, similar to how map apps, like Waze and Google and Apple Maps and others, alert drivers to police setting up speed traps. The ICE sighting alerts do not include photographs or videos and expire in four hours.
Yet the Trump administration has portrayed the app as being used to incite violence against ICE agents, something Aaron denies. An analysis of federal court records does not back up the administration's claim that violence against ICE agents has spiked.
Aaron's lawsuit says Bondi is mischaracterizing the purpose of the app.
"Fundamentally, ICEBlock neither enables nor encourages confrontation — it simply delivers time-limited location information to help users stay aware of their surroundings in a responsible and nonviolent way," according to the lawsuit.
Attorney General Bondi, in a July interview with Fox News, suggested Aaron was under investigation and had committed a crime. "We are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that's not protected speech," Bondi said.
To legal experts, ICEBlock is latest "jawboning" example
To First Amendment advocates, the White House's pressure campaign targeting ICEBlock is the latest example of what's known as "jawboning," when government officials wield state power to suppress speech. The Cato Institute calls the practice "censorship by proxy."
ABC's suspension of Jimmy Kimmel after FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened regulatory action and Bondi promising a crackdown on hate speech following the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk are two other prominent instances.
"The use of a high-level government threat to force a private platform to suppress speech fundamentally undermines the public's right to access information about government activities," said Spence Purnell, a resident senior fellow at R Street, a center-right think tank. "If high-level officials can successfully silence political opposition, it sets a dangerous precedent for the future of free expression in this country."
Genevieve Lakier, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, said the White House's campaign against ICEBlock shows the administration using what has become a familiar playbook: "To use threats of adverse legal and financial consequences, sometimes vague sometimes not so vague, to pressure universities, media companies, law firms, you name it, into not speaking in the ways they like," she said.
One potential weak spot for the lawsuit, however, is a lack of direct evidence that Attorney General Bondi, or other administration officials, made threats against Apple to have the app removed, rather than merely convinced the tech company to do so.
"And government officials do not violate the First Amendment when they persuade private speech platforms to suppress speech because that speech poses a national security risk or is harmful in some other way," Lakier said. "They only violate the First Amendment when they coerce or attempt to coerce the private platform to suppress the speech."
Since Apple kicked ICEBlock out of its app store, it cannot be downloaded now, but those who had it on their phones before the ban can still use it. Being removed from the app store prevents Aaron from sending the app software updates, which could eventually make it glitchy.
Aaron said he hopes the suit will lead to ICEBlock being restored to the iPhone app stores and for a clear message to be sent to the Trump administration that prosecuting him for his role in developing the app would be illegal.
Aaron said he and his legal team "have been preparing for this fight," adding that "we will take it as far as it needs to go to ensure this never happens again."
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