WASHINGTON, April 9 - A U.S. district judge has found that the Pentagon is impeding the work of credentialed journalists in violation of a prior court order that required the department to restore access for reporters covering the center of U.S. military operations.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman wrote that the Defense Department must adhere to his earlier ruling favoring The New York Times and other news organizations that challenged restrictions imposed last year. "The Department cannot simply reinstate an unlawful policy under the guise of taking 'new' action and expect the Court to look the other way," Friedman wrote. He described the Pentagon’s conduct as a "blatant attempt to circumvent a lawful order of the Court."
At a hearing on March 30, Friedman expressed concern that a set of revised restrictions the Pentagon issued earlier that month extended beyond the limits of the policy he had previously enjoined. The judge had already determined on March 20 that the original policy violated constitutional protections for news gathering and due process, and he issued an injunction requiring reporters' credentials to be returned immediately.
The policy at issue, announced in October under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, allowed the department to deem journalists security risks and to revoke press badges if reporters solicited unauthorized military personnel to disclose classified information and, in some specified instances, unclassified information. Of the 56 news outlets represented in the Pentagon Press Association, only one organization agreed to sign an acknowledgement of that policy; reporters who did not sign were required to surrender their press passes to the department.
The New York Times, as lead plaintiff in the legal challenge, notified the court that the Pentagon had not complied with Friedman’s March order. Instead, the Times said, the department issued a new "interim" policy that continued to restrict reporters' access while retaining other provisions the court had struck down. According to the Times' statement to the court, the interim policy bars reporters holding press passes from entering the building without an escort, establishes rules that govern when a reporter may offer anonymity to a source, and preserves additional restrictions previously rejected by the court.
In a March court filing, the Pentagon denied that it had violated Friedman’s prior order, asserting that "The Department was careful to address all of the legal defects that the court perceived in the prior policy."
The Pentagon Press Association criticized the department’s new rules, calling them "a clear violation of the letter and spirit" of Friedman’s ruling. The association counts among its members a broad cross-section of U.S. news organizations, including The New York Times, ABC News, Fox News and Reuters.
With his latest ruling, Friedman has directed the Defense Department to comply with the earlier injunction and to restore the access rights of credentialed journalists as ordered by the court. The judge’s decision underscores the ongoing legal dispute between news organizations and the department over the limits of press access at the Pentagon and the procedural safeguards required when security concerns are invoked to restrict reporting.
Context and implications
The court’s steps to enforce the March order highlight tensions between national security procedures at the Pentagon and constitutional protections for newsgathering and due process. The dispute has prompted formal objections from the press corps that covers military affairs and led to court action to define the permissible scope of Pentagon policies affecting reporters who hold official credentials.