White House Restores Access For Banned Media Outlets After Judge’s Ruling

Update (1230ET): Following US District Judge Timothy J. Kelly’s earlier decision, the Trump administration said in a legal filing that it has restored access for now to three media outlets the president had banned from White House grounds last week.

Reporters from CNN and MS NOW started returning to the White House grounds after a federal court had ordered a suspension of the ban.

The networks made announcements during their broadcasts on Thursday.

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As Melanie Sun reported earlier for The Epoch Times, a federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump to temporarily restore White House access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico while they challenge the revocation of their press passes in court.

Federal Judge Timothy Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order against the White House ban, reinstating hard pass access for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico in the early hours of Sept. 24.

Trump announced on Sept. 18 that he was banning the three news outlets from White House premises over their “constant ‘reporting’ fake news.”

The White House revoked their access the following day.

In letters to the outlets dated Sept. 22, the White House said the organizations had violated “the standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex, including by trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.”

The outlets subsequently filed for a temporary restraining order, and a remote hearing was held on Sept. 23.

The judge issued the order hours after the hearing, saying the court’s decision was “dictated by the application of well-known D.C. Circuit precedent that this Court must faithfully apply.”

Kelly pointed to two prior court decisions. A 2019 decision sided with reporter Brian Karem, whose White House press pass was restored because the government failed to provide prior notice.

The other decision was the landmark 1977 Sherrill v. Knight case, which held that once the White House makes press facilities available to bona fide journalists, it cannot deny access arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons. Denied applicants are entitled to notice of the factual basis for the decision, a chance to respond, and a written statement of reasons.

The Trump administration has argued that these precedent cases were wrongly decided.

Kelly said the media outlets and the three journalists listed as plaintiffs had shown that without the court’s relief, they were likely to suffer irreparable harm, and that at a minimum, their procedural due process claim under the Fifth Amendment had a “likelihood of success.”

Plaintiffs are also likely to succeed in showing that their hard passes were revoked without constitutionally adequate due process.

They did not “receive fair notice” of either the “conduct” that would lead to a sanction or of “the magnitude of the sanction that the White House might impose,” Kelly said.

Balance-of-hardships and public-interest arguments also favor the plaintiffs, Kelly said.

In a filing after the hearing, the government submitted an MS NOW report dated Sept. 23 to support its case. The article claimed that unnamed administration officials were considering attaching Trump’s name to Ford’s Theatre in Washington.

Trump dismissed the report as “a ridiculous lie” in a Sept. 24 post on Truth Social.