Abstract: In 1995, the Ninth Circuit issued a landmark decision holding that the First Amendment prohibited the federal government from singling aliens out for deportation on the basis of political activities for which the First Amendment would preclude the criminal punishment of citizens. In 1999, in Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee ("AADC"), the Supreme Court ordered dismissal of the litigation underlying the Ninth Circuit's decision on jurisdictional grounds. In Part III of the majority opinion, Justice Scalia stated that the First Amendment does not guarantee a defense of selective prosecution in deportation proceedings, or at least, that it does not guarantee such a defense in circumstances like those of the case at bar. Whether the Supreme Court's decision is also a landmark depends on a number of factors, including whether Part III of the opinion is merely dictum, and if not, what the scope and rationale of its holding might be. Despite all the layers of technicality and the broader implications, AADC was a highly political case about terrorism and counter-terrorism. From a perspective sympathetic to the plaintiffs, it involved the question of government overreaction trampling on the First Amendment rights of U.S. residents who have engaged in innocent association with a political movement that is based in a foreign country and that happens also to engage in political violence against innocent civilians in pursuit of some of its goals. From the government's perspective, it involved the effort to deny a terrorist organization, ...