A federal judge on Thursday struck down the Pentagon’s revised press guidelines issued after a ruling declared its earlier press policies illegal, granting the New York Times’ request to force the Defense Department to comply with the order.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled last month that the Pentagon’s press policies that conditioned press badges on reporters not soliciting unauthorized information violated the First and Fifth Amendments. The Pentagon then issued a revised press policy that closed its Correspondents’ Corridor, a workspace long used by reporters, and imposed other restrictions that it claimed complied with Friedman’s order. The Times disagreed, arguing last week that the new policy continued to violate the Constitution.
Friedman agreed, writing in a 20-page opinion on Thursday that the Pentagon’s continued restrictions on reporters’ ability “to engage in the routine, lawful journalistic activity of asking questions” violated his March 20 order.
“The Court cannot conclude this Opinion without noting once again what this case is really about: the attempt by the Secretary of Defense to dictate the information received by the American people, to control the message so that the public hears and sees only what the Secretary and the Trump administration wants them to see,” Friedman wrote. “The Constitution demands better. The American public demands better, too.”
“Suppression of political speech is the mark of an autocracy, not a democracy,” added Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee.
“Today’s decision upholds our constitutional rights again and sends a clear message to the Pentagon. Compliance with a lawful order of a court is not optional; it is required in a democracy committed to the rule of law,” a spokesperson for The New York Times said in a statement to TheWrap later Thursday. “We are pleased that Judge Friedman saw the revised policy issued by the Pentagon after his last decision for what it was: a poorly disguised attempt to continue to violate the constitutional rights of The Times and its journalists.”
Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X that the Department of Defense intends to appeal the court’s decision.
“The Department has at all times complied with the Court’s Order — it reinstated the PFACs of every journalist identified in the Order and issued a materially revised policy that addressed every concern the Court identified in its March 20 Opinion,” he wrote. “The Department remains committed to press access at the Pentagon while fulfilling its statutory obligation to ensure the safe and secure operation of the Pentagon Reservation.”
The Times and its reporter Julian E. Barnes sued the Pentagon in December over the policy, which it and scores of other media outlets rejected. Friedman’s ruling last month applied solely to the Times, though other news outlets that gave up their credentials in opposition, such as Reuters and the Associated Press, sought reinstatement of their press badges following the decision.
The initial press policies gave way to a new, largely right-wing press corps comprised of organizations including One America News, the Federalist and the Epoch Times, among others. Since the war in Iran broke out last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s press briefings — his first briefings in months, following a year of repeated attacks on the press — have included journalists from both the new press corps and traditional media outlets.
