WASHINGTON—A federal judge late last night issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from barring CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House press facilities. The decision by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly came in a lawsuit filed by the news organizations against President Trump and three advisors after the administration banned the outlets from the White House and confiscated their reporters’ press credentials. 

The following can be attributed to Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

“We welcome Judge Kelly’s order, but we are concerned that the White House continues to ban some news outlets from the White House press pool, where President Trump speaks the most with reporters. We are also concerned that the White House is still threatening to ban other journalists from the White House because he disagrees with their reporting. That practice is unconstitutional, and harms both the press and the public, which relies on journalists to report independently on the president and his administration.”

Judge Kelly ruled that the ban violated the news outlets’ Fifth Amendment due process rights and violated the First Amendment because the ban retaliated against the news outlets based on their speech, and because the ban was an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction in a nonpublic forum. The ruling did not address the White House’s continued ban on CNN and Politico serving in the White House press pool, the group of reporters who cover the president in smaller spaces like the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One.

In an earlier phase of the case, the Knight First Amendment Institute joined the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) and more than 75 media organizations in filing an amicus brief in support of the news organizations. 

Read Judge Kelly’s decision here.

Read more about the case, CNN v. Trump, here. 

The Knight Institute has supported the Associated Press in its separate challenge to its exclusion from the White House, filing three separate amicus briefs over a period of 18 months. The Institute has also supported The New York Times in its challenge to restrictions on access to the Pentagon. Earlier, the Institute successfully sued President Trump over his blocking of critics from his Twitter account, which the Institute argued was a “public forum” for First Amendment purposes.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, [email protected].