While a government policy initiated earlier this year requiring visa applicants to supply their social media handles may be unlikely to run afoul of international privacy regulations, the same may not be able to be said for laws a little closer to home.

Last week, filmmakers from the Doc Society and the International Documentary Association filed suit against Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf with a complaint alleging that the social media registration requirement "has a significant chilling effect" on the way that members and partners use social media "especially for political speech." Per the compliant, members often use social media platforms to promote their work and engage with the political themes in their films.

While the registration requirement may trigger concerns with regards to free speech, it's less clear whether or not courts will extend those First Amendment rights to visa applicants who have not yet set foot on U.S. soil.

"I can conceive of a judge who says, 'No, there's not a First Amendment issue here because these are not citizens or residents of the United States, so we don't have to worry about that,'" said Jeremy Mishkin, a partner at Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoades.

However, there's no guarantee that the case will be dismissed or lost on those merits alone.  Josh Schiller, a partner with Boies Schiller Flexner, said he's not aware of any threshold that says that the First Amendment doesn't protect non-native aliens.

"Just because they are not American citizens doesn't also mean that aliens aren't also allowed the privileges of the First Amendment as a protection. … The Constitution doesn't necessarily limit the First Amendment," he said.

Absent that barrier, there does seem to be potential for a free speech-based case to be made. For example, the plaintiff's compliant makes reference to the fact that visa applicants who make use of "pseudonymous identifiers" will be forced to relinquish their online anonymity to U.S. officials along with their social media handles.

Mishkin pointed out that the Constitution affords people the right to anonymous speech, a principle that stretches back to the country's earliest days but may create some tension in relation to modern-day domestic security concerns.

Collecting social media handles from each and every visa applicant could potentially be seen as throwing that balance out of whack in the eyes of a court.

"The challenge is that when you are dealing with freedom of speech [and] freedom of expression, you can't just paint with that big, broad brush and say we're going to get everybody's social media pseudonyms," Mishkin said.

Schiller doubts the government will be able to present a suitable defense as to why the practice is not overly-broad and will instead argue that the collection of social media handles is "content neutral." But even if that effort was successful, the registration requirements could still be interpreted as being targeted, if not at specific kinds of content then at aliens themselves.

"Under the First Amendment, you cannot target and essentially discriminate based on the expressions of an individual or group in an online social platform. That is the very kind of conduct that the First Amendment protects," Schiller said.

Which brings the issue around full-circle to the question of whether or not aliens are covered by the First Amendment. But Mishkin pointed out that the potential First Amendment infringements at play here could conceivably apply to U.S. citizens as well if a court determines that the registration requirement is having a chilling effect on free speech.

"We have a First Amendment right to consume information as well as the writer's right to publish the information. And so there's a First Amendment issue for the viewing public to be able to see dissenting views from various places in the world," Mishkin said.