The White House filed an appeal Wednesday after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring President Trump’s team from stripping press credentials from journalists for CNN, Politico and MS NOW.
Judge Timothy Kelly’s decision late Tuesday reinforced an earlier restraining order on the White House.
He said in his ruling that taking away the news outlets’ credentials not only trampled on their First Amendment rights but shortchanged their due process by denying them a proper procedure to challenge their banishment.
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He said his decision doesn’t mean that Mr. Trump is wrong about unfair news coverage — the reason he gave for ousting the outlets — but the judge said summarily stripping their passes doesn’t meet constitutional muster.
Judge Kelly said the president sought to punish the outlets for the tenor of their coverage. He said a government agency cannot do that.
“President Trump likely banned plaintiffs from the White House because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him,” the judge concluded.
He also rejected the White House’s later justification that the outlets were barred because they published sensitive information.
He said that’s not the reason Mr. Trump gave, and he pointed to repeated statements by the president citing the outlets’ tenor of coverage as his justification for the attempted ban.
“Kelly saw right through the administration’s flimsy ‘national security’ excuse, in no small part because Trump himself has shown it’s a sham,” said Caitlin Vogus, a senior advisor at the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
She called the ruling a “stinging defeat” for Mr. Trump in his years-long battle with news organizations.
The administration filed a notice of appeal to the circuit court in Washington on Wednesday afternoon, less than a day after Judge Kelly’s ruling.
Judge Kelly previously issued a temporary restraining order, which is a short-term directive. A preliminary injunction, meanwhile, will last until either the judge issues a final ruling or a higher court erases the injunction.
The White House had stripped journalists from the three news organizations of their “hard passes.” Those are permanent credentials that allow the journalists access to the White House press room and an outside area where cameras can broadcast with the main White House structure in the background.
News organizations say that access is critical to reporting and argue that stripping credentials denied them a thing of value — thus the need for due process.
The White House challenged that notion, saying the press doesn’t have a “liberty interest” in the passes.
But Judge Kelly said that argument had previously been settled by the circuit court in Washington, which ruled in favor of the press.
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