Bobby Allyn, NPR:

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.

I applaud this principled (if quixotic) stance by Joshua Aaron, the app’s developer. The filing makes it clear that the app wasn’t designed to target ICE agents and that it would be difficult for it to be used that way.

It’s also clear the app shouldn’t have been pulled from the App Store, and likely wouldn’t have been except for governmental pressure: Apple apparently did a more-rigorous-than-usual review of the app before approving it (the lawsuit claims “[m]ultiple conversations included members of Apple’s legal department”).

The suit contends the government violated Aaron’s First Amendment rights by coercing Apple into removing the app. It’s pretty clear that Bondi et al. engaged in jawboning to bully Apple into pulling ICEBlock from the App Store, and in a normal administration he’d likely win on the merits. But we don’t have a normal administration and I doubt the case will ever get that far, because the judiciary is filled with Trump-aligned judges who gleefully carry water for this administration. I predict the case will get tossed by the first MAGA judge who lays eyes on it—and even if it isn’t, the Supreme Court will eventually do the administration’s dirty work.

Ultimately, though, while jawboning may be where it started, I think it was Apple’s own cowardly decision to yank the app. I believe Apple executives used Bondi’s “demand” as an excuse to remove an app they were becoming increasingly uncomfortable having in the App Store (reinterpreting its own guidelines to treat ICE officers as a “targeted group” as justification). Yes, Apple indisputably wanted to avoid the ire of the administration (tariffs, antitrust lawsuits), but they also wanted to steer clear of any possible controversy (and the vitriol coming from the MAGA crowd). Was it the government that curtailed Aaron’s First Amendment rights, or did a faint-hearted Apple cravenly use its complete control over what it allows in its App Store to kill a controversial app? In the unlikely event Aaron wins this case, he’d like for Apple to reinstate the app, but Apple isn’t obligated to do so—and most assuredly won’t.

The best outcome we can reasonably hope for is the release of some juicy discovery on Apple’s deliberations and justifications for removing the app (including the “information [they] received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock”), and perhaps some personal embarrassment for Bondi, Kristi Noem, and the Apple executives who made this decision.

There’s one more consequence I’d welcome: Requiring Apple to allow third-party app stores in the U.S. It’s no longer tenable for Apple to be the sole gatekeeper of what apps can be installed on Apple devices. I never thought I’d say that.