A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from banning CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House grounds.
Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote in his opinion that the news outlet “is likely to succeed not only on its due process claim, but also on its two First Amendment claims.”
But he added that “no one should interpret the Court’s decision to imply that President Trump’s concerns about accuracy and fairness in media reporting are unfounded, or that the government is powerless when classified information is unlawfully disclosed when its true purpose is to protect national security.”
Trump announced on September 18 that he was blocking three outlets from accessing the White House grounds, complaining that they were “reporting ‘fake news’.” A day later, his journalists, who tried to enter the security checkpoint, found their hard passes inoperative.
News outlets sued, and Kelly issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s ban on the outlets, which forced the White House to reinstate hard passes for dozens of journalists and other staffers. That TRO expired Tuesday; The preliminary injunction means the White House cannot enforce Trump’s ban for long, either pending trial or appeal.
In defending the ban, the government cited national security reasons, although DOJ lawyers also argued that news organizations did not meet “minimum requirements of professionalism.” While the DOJ pointed to stories published or broadcast that had national security implications, they also cited MS Now’s report as an example of a Trump associate considered an option Adding the President’s name to Ford’s Theatre. Trump later denied this.
in its 26 pages OpinionKelly cited D.C. Circuit precedents holding that journalists had the right to due process before having their hard passes revoked.
“To put it mildly, [the news outlets] He presumably received no notice about the conduct that would be subject to revocation of his Hard Pass, or about the magnitude of the revocation sanction,” the judge wrote.
He said some of the stories cited by the White House were published and then their writers renewed their hard passes earlier this year, but they were revoked when Trump imposed his sweeping ban. The White House Press Office sent a letter to news organizations on September 22, informing them of the reasons and their ability to protest the action, but that was four days after the ban went into effect.
The judge also sided with the news outlets’ claims that Trump engaged in retaliation and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.
“President Trump’s own comments show that he intended to revoke the plaintiffs’ hard passes to alter their reporting about them, strengthening the case that his actions here are enough to prevent a reporter of normal tenacity from reporting in the same manner as he did before. After explaining that he kicked the plaintiffs out of the White House because they ‘knowingly write negative news… Republicans and try to undermine a Republican administration,’ President Trump commented that he was willing to take sanctions “as far as you can,” but he would like to.
The judge said, “The record is clear that President Trump made the decision at issue. And his announcement of the ban and subsequent comments explaining the reason make it a straightforward conclusion: President Trump likely banned Plaintiff from the White House because he believes her reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him.”
He also rejected the government’s national security argument. He said there is “no evidence in the record” that he made the decision to cancel the passes for those reasons “from the very beginning”, nor has he ever directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision.
The judge explained that because the D.C. Circuit has held that the White House press area is a “nonpublic forum,” the government cannot limit access based on one’s viewpoint.
The judge wrote that “It is likely that Plaintiff was selected by President Trump to revoke his access to the White House press area because he believes that their coverage of him and his administration is generally inaccurate and biased – in other words, this was ‘an effort to suppress the Speaker’s activity because of his disagreement with the Speaker’s opinion.'”
more to come.