FASEB Joins Amicus Brief in Support of International Students

By: Jennifer Zeitzer
Thursday, October 9, 2025
In late September, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) joined the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research, American Geophysical Union, American Political Science Association, American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, American Statistical Association, American Thoracic Society, Association for Psychological Science, Biophysical Society, Computing Research Association, Ecological Society of America, and Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry of North America on an Amicus Brief led by the American Physical Society (APS) regarding the administration’s policies affecting international students. The brief was filed in support of a lawsuit brought by the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration against the administration after the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department abruptly terminated the visas of several thousand lawfully admitted students without cause or due process and failed to provide proper notification to the individual or their institution. Although the administration eventually re-instated the visas for many of the affected individuals, the Presidents’ Alliance lawsuit accuses the government of implementing a policy and practice of revoking visas through “means not authorized by the statute or regulations.”

The Amicus Brief explains that many international students hold F-1 visas and have been directly affected by the administration’s actions, which include arbitrarily revoking the visas of several students, terminating students’ records in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, and creating a challenging visa process. It states an unreliable, inconsistent, or capricious U.S. visa process undermines international students’ confidence in the system and contributes to a perception that the U.S is unwelcoming to foreign students, thereby significantly and measurably harming the ability of educational institutions in the U.S to attract the best and brightest international scholars.

In addition, the brief includes data demonstrating that the U.S does not have sufficient domestic science, technology, engineering, and math capacity to meet its needs. Therefore, the loss of talented international scientists will reduce the quality and quantity of the trained technical workforce and harm the nation’s economy and security. It concludes that amici support Plaintiffs’ request to deny Defendants’ motion to dismiss to ensure established immigration processes are followed and help sustain international students’ confidence in the U.S. visa process. 

Joining the APS Amicus Brief represents FASEB’s ongoing support for international students and engagement in legal advocacy. In May, the federation issued a statement about the visa terminations, urging the administration to seek input from stakeholders prior to developing and implementing any new policies related to the provision of visas for international scholars. FASEB also partnered with the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, American Society for Microbiology and the American Society for Cell Biology in jointly filing an expanded amicus brief with the Supreme Court in American Public Health Association v. the National Institutes of Health (NIH), urging the court to find recent executive actions that led to the termination of NIH grants supporting early-career scientists—such as the Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers program—unlawful and to compel NIH to swiftly restore funding.