NEW YORK — CNN, MS NOW and Politico said Monday they’ve notified President Donald Trump’s administration they’re filing a lawsuit over being denied White House access, saying their First Amendment rights have been violated.
The administration's announcement of the bans Friday and the White House's subsequent actions over the weekend represented a clear escalation of Trump's long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage by journalists he finds objectionable. They were the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States.
The three outlets made the announcement in a joint statement posted on X, two days after their reporters were blocked from the White House and prevented from doing their jobs. The reporters' entry badges were disabled on Saturday, a day after Trump had suddenly announced he was barring the outlets because of reporting he found to be “fake news.” On Monday morning, CNN was removed from its pool duties, which are shared by the major networks.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Monday over the lawsuit, which was expected to be filed later in the morning. The Associated Press saw a copy of it ahead of the filing.
Trump has been more aggressive toward the media in his second term
In his second term, Trump and his Republican administration have upped the ante and punished certain media outlets. Trump has also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms — insulting them in briefings or in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.
“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 outlets said in a joint statement posted early Monday on X.
“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists' credentials because it objected to our reporting," they said. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public's right to independent journalism free from government interference.”
In the joint complaint, which was released by the news organizations before being filed later Monday, the outlets say: “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”
They say they're being banned from doing their jobs at the White House “for one simple reason: (Trump) dislikes the content of the coverage of him and his administration.”
“President Trump has said in no uncertain terms that he would prefer only to be covered by news organizations and reporters who praise his administration," says the complaint, filed in the name of the three outlets and three correspondents who were denied access Saturday.
It went on: “But the Constitution 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 his dislike of the content of their reporting.”
In legal terms, that's known as "viewpoint discrimination" — the government singling out specific media outlets for the content of what they say or publish. That legal principle is at issue in many of the court cases around Trump's treatment of the media and would likely be at play this time around.
Reporters were barred Saturday
On Saturday, White House reporters from the two cable networks — Betsy Klein of CNN and Akayla Gardner of MS NOW — went live to report they’d been turned away, their press badges deactivated, when arriving for their jobs at the White House. Soon after, Politico said its White House reporter Cheyenne Haslett was also denied entry and had her badge confiscated.
All three organizations that were banned covered the White House's actions extensively during the weekend.
The WHCA’s president, Jacqui Heinrich, called on the Trump administration to immediately restore the three outlets’ access.
“The implications extend beyond these organizations: a standard used to exclude one news outlet because of its coverage could be applied to any outlet in the future,” Heinrich said. “The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably.”
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