SRL Urges Court to Block White House Ban on Press Outlets

The Society for the Rule of Law has filed an amicus brief in Cable News Network, Inc., et al. v. Trump, urging the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin President Trump’s exclusion of CNN, Politico, and MS Now from the White House. The brief asks the Court to grant the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction and restore their access to the White House, in recognition of the free press’s historic function as the people’s surrogate in Washington.

As Thomas Jefferson explained, the nation’s “liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” 9 Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson 239–40 (Julian P. Boyd ed., 1954). Under the constitutional structure the Framers crafted, journalists serve as the “constitutionally chosen means for keeping officials elected by the people responsible to all the people whom they were selected to serve.” Mills v. State of Ala., 384 U.S. 214, 219 (1966). As “surrogates for the public,” Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 573 (1980) (plurality opinion), journalists are a necessary and “powerful antidote to any abuses of power by governmental officials.” Mills, 384 U.S. at 219.

President Trump has banned press outlets from the White House grounds outright, claiming that their access to the people’s house is a “privilege—not a right,” that their “negativity” justifies exclusion, and that their routine reporting threatens national security.

As our brief explains, each argument fails. The President’s claims contradict clear constitutional text and binding Supreme Court precedent. Crucially, allowing courts to accept, without scrutiny, an executive’s bare invocation of national security as a basis for punishing the press would provide convenient cover for retaliation, viewpoint discrimination, and the chilling of press freedoms.

Under settled law, the First Amendment and in particular the Free Press Clause prohibit the government from retaliating against particular viewpoints in the press. The government, however, takes the remarkable position that its restrictions on press access cannot constitute retaliation or viewpoint discrimination actionable under the First Amendment— whether because the restriction is written in general terms, as it argues in the pending Pentagon appeals, or because access to the White House is a privilege the President may grant and withdraw with regard to viewpoint, as it argues here.

That is dangerously wrong. To adopt the government’s position would give it carte blanche to punish those who engage in unwelcome reporting, shield those who wish to be immune from public criticism, and immunize them from any inquiry into the motives behind a particular decision to preclude the press from playing its constitutionally appointed role. That is an invitation to unconstitutional mischief.

Nor do the alleged national security concerns warrant adopting the government’s position—as courts have repeatedly recognized, if the government can cut short constitutional inquiry any time it chooses to invoke national security, it can effectively cut off press access when and where it may be needed most.

Read our full amicus brief here.

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