Judge Blocks White House Press Ban on CNN, MS NOW
A federal judge ruled late Tuesday that President Trump cannot revoke the White House press credentials of CNN, MS NOW and Politico because he dislikes their coverage, issuing a preliminary injunction that restores access for more than 70 journalists for the duration of their lawsuit.
U.S. District Court Judge Timothy J. Kelly found that the September 18 ban likely violated both the First Amendment — as retaliation and viewpoint discrimination — and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, according to NPR. The White House vowed to appeal.
The Ruling
Kelly’s injunction bars the administration from enforcing the September decision to strip the “hard passes” that give the three outlets daily access to the White House. The judge wrote that the record left little doubt about who ordered the ban and why.
“The record is clear that President Trump made the decision at issue,” Kelly wrote, per MS NOW. “And his announcement of the ban and later remarks explaining the reason for it make this a straightforward conclusion: President Trump likely banned Plaintiffs from the White House because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him.”
It was the first time Kelly addressed the First Amendment questions at the heart of the case, finding the ban was both retaliatory and a form of viewpoint discrimination. The ruling does not resolve the lawsuit on its merits; it preserves the status quo while the case proceeds.
Court Battles and a Narrow Escape
The decision followed a rapid legal sequence. The outlets were banned on September 18, and journalists from the affected networks were denied entry to White House grounds the next day. The three organizations sued on September 21. On September 24, Kelly granted a temporary restraining order restoring access for two weeks — a reprieve based solely on due process grounds, as The Guardian noted.
That order expired this week, prompting the outlets to seek longer-term relief. During arguments on October 8, Kelly signaled he was inclined to lift the ban indefinitely. He required the media plaintiffs to post a bond of just $1.
National Security Argument Rejected
The administration defended the ban in part on national security grounds, arguing that the outlets’ reporting had included sensitive disclosures. The judge was unconvinced, noting a gap between the government’s courtroom arguments and the president’s public statements.
“First, there is no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke Plaintiffs’ hard passes on national security grounds from the get-go, nor at any time has he directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision,” Kelly wrote.
From the bench during the hearing, he put it more bluntly: “The decision-maker has said, I’m taking this action because of X and Y and now the government is actually saying, no, it’s actually because of Z. That’s an uphill climb.”
The Justice Department raised national security only in filings days after the White House acted, and the letters explaining the ban were sent three days after credentials were revoked — and one day after the lawsuit was filed. Kelly found that after-the-fact notification did not constitute adequate process.
He also took care to narrow the scope of his decision. “No one should interpret the Court’s decision to suggest that President Trump’s concerns about accuracy and fairness in the media’s reporting are unfounded,” Kelly wrote, “or that the government is powerless when its true aim is to protect national security when classified information is unlawfully disclosed.”
Reactions
Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., the First Amendment attorney representing the three outlets, welcomed the ruling. “When the President issued his ‘ban on the free press,’ he blatantly and explicitly violated due process and the First Amendment,” Boutrous said in a statement shared with NPR. “Since then, the President has repeatedly, candidly, and consistently admitted in public that he banned our clients from the White House to punish reporting he doesn’t like and to try to force journalists to cover him in ways he prefers.”
The White House, which did not immediately return NPR’s requests for comment, signaled it would fight on. “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office,” a spokesperson told MS NOW. “They’re completely capable of reporting from directly outside. We intend to appeal this misguided decision.”
The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.
An Unresolved Dispute Over the Press Pool
The injunction restores access to the White House itself, but it does not address the administration’s separate restrictions on “pool duty” — the long-standing arrangement in which a small group of journalists covers the president on behalf of the entire press corps.
Even after Kelly’s earlier restraining order, the administration erratically blocked CNN and Politico from serving in the pool. In one instance, CNN was barred from accompanying Trump aboard Air Force One on a trip to Tennessee. MS NOW has not been scheduled for pool duty since the ban took effect. Other outlets have declined to fill in for the banned organizations in solidarity.
Without the pool — particularly CNN’s cameras — several of Trump’s recent events have gone uncovered in the usual way. Lawyers for the outlets argue that pool restrictions affect not just the organizations themselves but the public’s ability to see the president.
That issue is not directly before Kelly at this point.
A Broader Campaign
The case is unfolding against a wider, multi-front effort by the administration to reshape press access. The broader campaign includes an early review of broadcast licenses for ABC’s local stations, an effort to push outlets out of the Pentagon over pre-publication review requirements, and a Department of Justice antitrust investigation of five major TV networks — CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — over their joint pool coverage decision.
The administration has also pressured Congress to cut federal funding for public media. Separately, as a private citizen, Trump has sued the New York Times, CNN, the Des Moines Register, the BBC and the Wall Street Journal.
Kelly, a Trump appointee, previously ruled against the administration in a related case involving then-CNN correspondent Jim Acosta during the president’s first term — a precedent he cited in Tuesday’s decision.
What’s Next
The preliminary injunction keeps the three outlets’ White House access in place while the litigation continues, a process that could take months. It is not a final judgment, and the administration’s promised appeal will test the ruling in a higher court.
Two questions now loom. First, whether the appellate courts will uphold Kelly’s finding that the ban amounted to unconstitutional retaliation. Second, whether the fight over pool access — the dispute most directly affecting what the public actually sees — will land back in court. For now, the reporters are back inside, and the case is far from over.