“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the three news organizations said in a statement. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.”
The three news companies filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “There could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment,” they alleged Monday in a court filing.
MS NOW, CNN and Politico sought an order that would keep officials from taking any more action to ban its staffers from reporting at the White House and calling for an immediate restoration of the credentials required to access the grounds.
The Constitution “protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public,” the companies alleged in a legal filing. “No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim — with no notice, no process, and no warning — as the President did here.”
The news organizations have precedent on their side. In 2018, the first Trump administration banned Jim Acosta, then a top White House correspondent for CNN, from White House newsgathering following an incident in which the reporter tried to hold on to a microphone as a government staffer tried to pull it away from him. A federal judge ordered Acosta’s credentials to be restored on a temporary basis as CNN pursued legal remedies. The White House subsequently dropped the matter, and CNN ended its legal efforts.
The suit adds to a growing pile of legal entanglements between the federal government and the national media. Disney’s ABC in August filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, raising the pitch of that company’s efforts to countermand unusual pressure from the Trump administration to force the company’s stations to submit licenses for early renewal proceedings.
The U.S. Constitution, the companies alleged, “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on that official’s dislike of the content of their reporting. The ban is patently unconstitutional and should be immediately restrained.”
In addition to Trump, the suit names as defendants Steven Cheung, White House communications director; Secret Service director Sean Curran; and Susan Wiles, White House chief of staff.
A copy of the lawsuit is available at this link. Variety has reached out to the White House for comment.
