Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Press Ban on CNN, Others

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing its revocation of White House press credentials for journalists at CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, finding the outlets are likely to prove the move violated the Constitution. Under the order, the Trump press ban will remain frozen while the outlets’ lawsuit proceeds, and the affected reporters will keep their White House hard passes.

What the judge found in the Trump press ban case

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly of Washington, D.C. — who was appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump — issued a 26-page ruling concluding that the three news organizations are likely to succeed on claims under both the First and Fifth Amendments, according to reports from CNN and The Wall Street Journal.

Kelly found that the decision to strip the reporters’ hard passes — the permanent press badges that allow entry to the White House complex — was likely retaliatory. He wrote that Trump’s own public comments showed a “likely causal link” between the outlets’ constitutionally protected reporting and the revocation of their credentials. “President Trump likely banned Plaintiffs from the White House because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him,” the judge wrote in the ruling.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the judge said the president’s remarks suggested he intended the revocation to alter the outlets’ reporting, a move that could deter “a reporter of ordinary firmness” from continuing to report the same way. Kelly also found the ban amounted to unlawful viewpoint discrimination, the Journal reported.

• First Amendment retaliation: the outlets showed the ban was likely imposed in response to protected news coverage.
• First Amendment viewpoint discrimination: the administration singled out outlets whose viewpoints the president disfavored.
• Fifth Amendment due process: the reporters received neither adequate notice nor an opportunity to challenge the revocation before it took effect.
• Scope of the order: the administration is barred from executing, implementing, or enforcing the September 18 decision to revoke the credentials.

National security argument rejected

The judge rejected the Justice Department’s contention that national security concerns had at least partly motivated the decision. There was “no evidence in the record” that Trump made the decision on national security grounds, nor that he ever directly stated national security was the reason, Kelly wrote, according to CNN and other outlets that reviewed the opinion.

Fox49’s reporting on the ruling noted that Kelly described the national security rationale as a post-hoc justification, finding little in the record tying the ban to genuine security concerns. The judge emphasized, however, that his opinion should not be read as suggesting the government is powerless when classified information is actually disclosed unlawfully — a warning to both sides, as reported by The Statesman.

How the dispute reached the court

• September 18: Trump announced on social media that he was prohibiting CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from White House grounds, later telling reporters he was frustrated by “cumulative stories over the last few years” from what he called “fake news,” according to USA Today.
• September 19: reporters attempting to enter the White House discovered their hard passes had been deactivated, TheDesk reported.
• Late September: the three outlets filed a joint lawsuit, and Kelly issued a temporary restraining order restoring the reporters’ access on due process grounds.
• October 13: with that temporary order set to expire, Kelly replaced it with the longer-term preliminary injunction preserving the status quo while the case continues.

A preliminary injunction is not a final verdict on the merits of the case, but it prevents the White House from reinstating the restrictions until a trial or an appeal resolves the matter.

What comes next

The Trump administration is expected to appeal. Trump previously indicated the Department of Justice would challenge an adverse ruling, according to reporting on the case. On the outlets’ side, attorney Theodore Boutrous, who represented the news organizations, said the court was right to halt what he called an unconstitutional ban on the free press for the foreseeable future, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Kelly closed his opinion with a caution: no one should interpret the decision as suggesting that Trump’s concerns about accuracy and fairness in media reporting are unfounded, according to the Associated Press. The practical result for now, however, is straightforward — journalists from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico retain their access to the White House complex as their constitutional claims move forward.