AARON v. BONDI
Issue
In *Aaron v. Bondi*, Plaintiffs Joshua Aaron and All U Chart, Inc. argue that the Attorney General violated the First Amendment by pressuring Apple to remove ICEBlock — an app that alerts users to nearby immigration enforcement activity — through informal demands rather than any formal legal process. The case asks whether a government official's explicit private demand to a private distributor, followed by same-day compliance and reversal of a prior approval, constitutes actionable coercion under the First Amendment, and whether plaintiffs can establish standing to sue when the suppressive act was taken by a private company rather than the government directly.
What Happened
This is a Memorandum of Law filed by Plaintiffs Joshua Aaron and All U Chart, Inc. — represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Sher Tremonte LLP — in opposition to Defendants' Motion to Dismiss at the pleading stage in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Plaintiffs argue that the Attorney General's communications with Apple used explicit "demand" and "comply" language, that Apple removed ICEBlock the same day those communications occurred, and that this reversal of a five-week-old approval — in deviation from Apple's own written guidelines — makes the causal link self-evident from the pleadings alone. On standing, Plaintiffs distinguish the Supreme Court's recent decision in *Murthy v. Missouri* as a record-stage evidentiary ruling rather than a pleading-stage doctrinal bar, arguing the facts here present a far more direct causal chain than the diffuse pressure campaign that failed in *Murthy*. On the retaliation claim, Plaintiffs contend that officials' public, named prosecution threats forced Aaron into a Hobson's choice — documented through his retention of criminal counsel, use of encrypted communications, and abandonment of Android development — constituting concrete injury beyond mere subjective chill. Plaintiffs seek outright denial of the motion to dismiss and, in the alternative, jurisdictional discovery into non-public government–Apple communications before any standing dismissal.
Why It Matters
This case tests whether the government can effectively remove a legal app from circulation by calling a private company and asking — not ordering — it to act, without ever filing a charge or passing a law. The standing fight may prove as consequential as the underlying free speech question: a ruling that plaintiffs cannot trace Apple's decision to the government's conduct would give officials a roadmap for suppressing speech through informal corporate pressure with minimal constitutional accountability. Plaintiffs' procedural-posture argument — that *Murthy* sets an evidentiary ceiling, not a pleading floor — is the brief's most significant doctrinal contribution, and no circuit has yet authoritatively resolved that question. If courts accept it, same-day compliance following explicit demand language may become the template for how future plaintiffs plead jawboning claims in the post-*Murthy* landscape.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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