What specific 1st amendment cases did the Trump administration argue before the Supreme Court?
Executive summary
The Trump administration’s recent Supreme Court litigation touched multiple First Amendment fault lines — from government pressure on private actors to speech rules for federal employees and social-media forum disputes — but the exact roster of cases the administration itself argued before the Court is narrower and complicated by mootness, intervening litigation postures, and amici or state-law posture in some matters [1] [2]. Reporting identifies several high‑profile First Amendment matters that intersected with the administration’s legal strategy: National Rifle Association v. Vullo, Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, Margolin/National Association of Immigration Judges, and Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton [3] [4] [2] [5] [6].
1. NRA v. Vullo — government coercion claims that reshaped government‑pressure litigation
In National Rifle Association v. Vullo the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that New York’s financial regulator violated the NRA’s First Amendment rights by targeting the group and pressuring banks and insurers to blacklist it, a decision widely framed as limiting government power to use economic levers to punish disfavored speakers; the case was identified by the ACLU and First Amendment commentators as a key free‑speech victory with broad implications [3] [7] [1].
2. Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump — a social‑media forum dispute vacated as moot
The long‑running challenge to then‑President Trump’s blocking of critics on Twitter reached the high court in a posture the Department of Justice litigated, but the Supreme Court ultimately vacated the Second Circuit judgment and remanded as moot after Trump left office; the underlying Second Circuit rulings had treated the @realDonaldTrump account as a public forum for First Amendment purposes [4] [8].
3. Margolin and the National Association of Immigration Judges — speech rules for federal judges and an emergency‑docket defeat
The administration sought emergency Supreme Court intervention to halt district‑court proceedings challenging a policy that limited immigration judges’ outside speech; the Court declined to step in on the emergency docket, marking a rare loss for the administration in speech‑related emergency filings and leaving the district‑court litigation to proceed for now [2] [5].
4. Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton — age‑verification, sexual speech, and a looming high‑court test
The Court agreed to hear Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a First Amendment challenge to Texas’s law requiring adults to submit digital identification to access sexually explicit but constitutionally protected material online; advocacy groups including the ACLU have signaled the case’s importance for content regulation and internet age‑verification regimes, and observers flagged the term as consequential for First Amendment doctrine on new technologies [3] [6] [1].
5. What counts as “the Trump administration” in these fights — parties, amici, and emergency docket postures
Coverage makes clear that not every major First Amendment decision in this period involved the administration as a principal party: some cases were brought by states or private parties and drew government participation as a plaintiff, defendant, petitioner, or amicus; the administration’s record on the Court included both merits decisions and emergency‑docket maneuvers — a mix that produced lopsided wins in 2025 overall but a handful of notable First Amendment setbacks or vacaturs [2] [3] [4].
6. Limits in the available reporting and open questions for researchers
Public reporting identifies the cases above as the most prominent First Amendment matters entangled with the administration’s legal posture, but sources differ in emphasis and sometimes conflate court rulings that benefited or opposed the administration with separate state‑law or private‑party claims; the available documents do not provide an exhaustive list of every Supreme Court filing by the administration on First Amendment grounds, so a complete docket audit at the Court would be necessary to catalog all petitions, emergency applications, and merits briefs precisely [2] [1] [4].