The conservative think tank argued the public had an interest in how the Department of Homeland Security handled Harry’s application given his past drug use.

Prince Harry in New York City on Monday, the day the judge’s ruling was made public. (Bing Guan/Reuters)

A U.S. judge has denied a petition by the Heritage Foundation to release Prince Harry’s immigration records, ruling that the British royal’s right to privacy outweighs the public-interest arguments cited by the conservative think tank.

The Heritage Foundation and one of its employees, Mike Howell, sued the Department of Homeland Security last year after the agency denied the group’s request to release information relating to any disclosures Harry may have made about his past drug use when securing entry into the United States. The request came shortly after the release of Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” in which the Duke of Sussex revealed that he had used cocaine, cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms.

D.C. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, denied the Heritage Foundation’s request in a filing published Monday.

Nichols said Harry has a “legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status” and ruled that “the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure” of his personal records.

Harry and his wife, Meghan, moved to California in 2020 after stepping back from royal duties. It is not clear what visa Harry obtained before entering the United States. Meghan is a U.S. citizen.

“Americans deserve an immigration system with both secure borders and also fairly applied rules for high-profile immigrants like Harry,” said Howell, the plaintiff in the case, in a statement. He said he was considering appealing the judge’s ruling.

Representatives for Harry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

U.S. immigration authorities can deny entry for foreign nationals over past drug use, though they don’t always do so. According to the U.S. Embassy in the United Kingdom, travelers who “are a drug abuser or addict may be ineligible to receive a visa. If found ineligible, they will require a waiver of ineligibility in order to travel.”

Certain immigration statuses do not require such disclosures: For example, the A-1 head of state visa has “a lower security and background check threshold,” and an eligible applicant would be declared inadmissible only on “terrorism and national security” grounds, according to the London-based Chavin Immigration Law Office.

In denying the Heritage Foundation’s disclosure request under the Freedom of Information Act, DHS refused to confirm or deny whether it had certain immigration records associated with Harry, including any waiver of ineligibility under the Immigration and Nationality Act. According to the judge’s ruling, the government argued that “disclosing the existence (or not) of such records would disclose something not presently public about the Duke’s immigration information.”

The Heritage Foundation had argued that Harry’s records could reveal “whether DHS committed misconduct or acted negligently in either admitting the Duke of Sussex or in allowing him to stay within the United States” in light of his disclosure that he used drugs in various countries.

In “Spare,” Harry wrote that he used cocaine several times and said “it didn’t make me particularly happy.” He also wrote about smoking “an entire shopping bag of weed” in one evening and about experimenting with psychedelics “over the years, for fun,” and later “therapeutically, medicinally,” to treat anxiety.

In his ruling — which is partially redacted because it contains information about Harry’s immigration records — Nichols acknowledged that the prince’s public statements about his past drug use “tend to diminish his privacy interests compared to ordinary foreign nationals admitted to the United States.”

But, he said, “like any foreign national, the duke has a legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status.”

The judge also said that obtaining records relating to one person’s individual circumstance would not give the public enough insight into DHS policy on travelers’ records of drug use.

“Public disclosure of records about a single admission of a foreign national … would provide the public, at best, limited information about the Department’s general policy in admitting aliens,” he said in his ruling.

Harry has said he has considered becoming an American citizen and listed himself as a U.S. resident in recent business filings.

Karla Adam contributed to this report.