Judge Orders White House to Restore CNN, MS NOW, Politico Press Passes

A federal judge in Washington ordered White House officials Sept. 24 to immediately restore press credentials for CNN, MS NOW and Politico employees, finding the revocations likely violated constitutional due process protections.

U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly’s temporary restraining order remains in effect for 14 days. It requires the defendants, except President Donald Trump, and those acting with them to restore the “hard pass” credentials revoked on or about Sept. 18.

Trump announced Sept. 18 on Truth Social that he was “banning” the three outlets from the White House, “effective immediately,” according to the order.

The news organizations allege their reporters were denied White House access over the following weekend and their hard passes were deactivated. The three outlets and three individual reporters sued Trump and several White House officials, seeking reinstatement while the case proceeds.

Due Process and Notice

Kelly found the plaintiffs likely to succeed on their Fifth Amendment procedural due process claim. The defendants did not dispute that the plaintiffs received no notice or opportunity to be heard before their passes were revoked.

The judge relied on two D.C. Circuit decisions: Sherrill v. Knight in 1977 and Karem v. Trump in 2020. Sherrill recognized a qualifying Washington correspondent’s protected interest in obtaining a White House press pass. Karem held that an issued hard pass cannot be suspended without due process.

Under Karem, reporters must receive fair notice of conduct that could lead to revocation and the possible penalty. The defendants argued those precedents were wrongly decided, but Kelly wrote:

Kelly found no relevant formal standards in place before the reporting cited to justify the revocations. Letters sent to the plaintiffs Sept. 22 invoked “standards of professionalism and decorum,” wording he found too vague.

The order also noted that reporter Betsy Klein’s pass was renewed months after she published some of the reporting later cited against her. Kelly found that the renewal undercut the argument that she had adequate notice.

At the hearing, the defendants argued that laws against disclosing classified information provided sufficient notice. Kelly questioned that argument, citing the lack of precedent for applying those laws to reporters. He also found no factual support in the record, at this stage, for the contention that the plaintiffs violated those statutes.

National Security Defense

The defendants maintained that their Sept. 22 letters provided notice and an opportunity to respond after the revocations. They argued that the plaintiffs’ reporting had endangered national security, creating extraordinary circumstances that justified acting before a hearing.

Kelly rejected that argument, finding nothing in the record showing such urgency. Some of the cited reporting was months or years old, and he described the stories as routine.

The judge also questioned whether national security concerns motivated the revocations. Trump’s initial announcement focused on allegations that the outlets’ reporting was untruthful and negative, the order noted.

The later letters cited reporting that “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods.” Kelly wrote that this wording left open the possibility that all the cited stories fell into the falsehoods category rather than the national security category.

Kelly acknowledged the importance of national security and the deference courts owe the executive branch’s related factual judgments. But he found little evidence supporting the defendants’ justification in this case.

The defendants supplied no declarations explaining how the identified reporting damaged national security, according to the order. Senior Defense Department officials offered general background on classified information but lacked direct knowledge of White House reporting practices or the facts at issue.

Supplemental declarations from the plaintiffs showed that most reporters who wrote the cited stories did not hold hard passes, Kelly wrote. For the remaining stories, the defendants offered no reason to believe possession of a pass was integral to the reporting.

The record also lacked factual support that revoking the passes would protect national security or that temporarily restoring them would endanger it, according to the ruling.

Kelly found that the likely loss of constitutional protections posed irreparable harm and that the public interest favored restoring the passes, citing the importance of a free press.

He declined the defendants’ request to delay the order and required the plaintiffs to post a $1 bond by Oct. 1.

The court will set an expedited briefing schedule for a preliminary injunction during the 14-day period, allowing further consideration on a fuller record.