Following the US Supreme Court’s 2024 rulings in the jawboning cases of Murthy v. Missouri and National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, it was a matter of when—not if—another First Amendment lawsuit would be filed against government officials, claiming they coerced a private entity to squelch speech.

In December, a jawboning case—Aaron v. Bondi—landed in federal court in the District of Columbia that’s garnering significant media attention. It targets high-level Trump administration officials and their public remarks about the ICEBlock application, its founder and developer (Joshua Aaron), and its iPhone distributor (Apple).

The case will likely hinge, however, on the non-public, behind-the-scenes statements US Attorney General Pam Bondi made to Apple officials to persuade—pressure? coerce?—them to jettison ICEBlock from the App Store on October 2, 2025. At that time, ICEBlock had “over 1.14 million users,” thanks partly to a June 2025 CNN feature about the app that drew the “immediate” wrath of Bondi and other government officials. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director Todd Lyons—a defendant in Aaron—called CNN’s reporting “reckless and irresponsible.”

In brief, Joshua Aaron’s complaint asserts that the “government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform [Apple] to suppress First Amendment-protected expression.” The lawsuit may get a boost in digging up smoking-gun documents—if any exist—courtesy of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It filed a complaint in November under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

EFF seeks “records and communications reflecting federal officials’ demands that technology companies remove online apps and webpages that document immigration enforcement activities in communities throughout the country.” As EFF Staff Attorney F. Mario Trujillo put it, “Getting these records will be critical to determining whether federal officials crossed the line into unconstitutional coercion and censorship of protected speech.”

The Parties. Aaron v. Bondi has the hallmarks of a David-versus-Goliath story. The complaint describes plaintiff Joshua Aaron as a musician, software developer, and “self-taught computer programmer who has been coding since he was in the fourth grade.” The Austin, Texas resident professes “a deep commitment to political activism and social justice” and strives “to use his abilities to advocate for the protection of civil liberties.” Aaron developed ICEBlock “in response to the Trump Administration’s unprecedented campaign to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants.” The other plaintiff, ALL U Chart, owns “all intellectual property associated with the ICEBlock application.” The defendants are four government leaders with duties affecting the deportation of illegal immigrants, including Bondi and Lyons, as well as Kristi Noem and Thomas Homan.

The App. ICEBlock is “a crowdsourced platform” that lets users anonymously “report publicly observable locations of” ICE agents. People “report potential ICE activity through a simple map interface, displaying sightings within a five-mile radius. Reports automatically expire after a few hours to prevent outdated information, and no personal data or account registration is required.”

Users can tap a location on a map or manually enter an address. They can’t upload, send, or receive anything else—no “photographs, videos, hyperlinks or other media of any kind.” The app “limits notifications about an ICE sighting to users within a five-mile radius of the reported sighting.” The design was partly inspired by “applications with community-sourced police ‘speed trap’ reporting capabilities” such as Waze. The complaint provides more details about ICEBlock.

ICEBlock “launched on the Apple App Store for public download” on April 2, 2025. It and other ICE-tracking applications were removed from the store on October 2. ICEBlock, however, “still works” for people who had already installed it.

Legal Principles. I previously explained why, contrary to Bondi and the government’s assertions, “ICEBlock’s speech likely is constitutional.” Aaron’s complaint thus is correct that “the First Amendment similarly protects Aaron’s right to create, distribute, and promote ICEBlock.”

However, because Apple is a private entity not bound by the First Amendment, Aaron must prove that the government coerced—not simply persuaded or convinced—Apple to remove ICEBlock because the government wanted “to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” The US Supreme Court recently ruled that:

To state a claim that the government violated the First Amendment through coercion of a third party, a plaintiff must plausibly allege conduct that, viewed in context, could be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action in order to punish or suppress the plaintiff’s speech.

Aaron’s case thus will require evidence of “coercive threats” made against Apple by the defendants. The complaint notes that Bondi publicly said she “reached out to Apple . . . demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store” and that she “fought” for its exclusion. Whether that fight involved threats of adverse consequences—investigations? prosecutions?—against Apple if it didn’t remove ICEBlock will be critical.