By James Berreth 

Editor in Chief 

President Donald Trump has never concealed his hostility toward news organizations whose coverage he dislikes. But his decision to remove CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House goes considerably further than criticizing reporters or complaining about unfavorable stories. 

The administration has used government power to revoke access from specific news organizations after the president publicly attacked their journalism. That distinction is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed Monday by CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, which argues that the administration violated the First and Fifth Amendments by barring their journalists from White House grounds, and the organizations are seeking emergency relief restoring their access. 

The circumstances surrounding the ban place the administration in direct confrontation with decades of federal court precedent governing White House press credentials, retaliation, and government discrimination based on a journalist’s viewpoint. 

Trump announced the ban Sept. 18, saying CNN, MS NOW, and Politico would be barred “effective immediately.” He accused the organizations of producing “FAKE NEWS” and reporting “FICTION and LIES.” He did not cite a security violation or allege that their reporters had engaged in conduct threatening White House operations. The following day, journalists representing the three organizations were turned away from the White House and their credentials were confiscated or disabled. 

That publicly stated rationale could become one of the administration’s largest legal problems as the White House argues that admission to the executive complex is a privilege rather than a constitutional right. “The First Amendment protects their right to publish; it does not entitle them to a hard pass, briefing room seat, or place in the press pool,” the White House said in a statement Monday. 

There is an element of truth in that argument as the First Amendment does not give every journalist an automatic right to enter the White House, sit in the Oval Office, or demand an interview with the president. But that does not mean the government is free to distribute or revoke established press access based on whether the president approves of an organization’s reporting. 

That distinction has appeared repeatedly in federal court decisions, and one of the most important dates to 1977. In Sherrill v. Knight, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia considered the government’s denial of a White House press pass to a journalist. The court recognized substantial First Amendment interests connected to White House press credentials and held that denying such access requires procedural protections. A journalist must receive notice of the factual basis for a denial, an opportunity to respond, and a written explanation of the ultimate decision. 

The court specifically warned against arbitrary exclusions and held that the government’s procedures must ensure that press passes are not denied for reasons unrelated to legitimate government interests. That precedent becomes especially relevant when reporters who already possess White House credentials suddenly lose them without an individualized security justification or meaningful process. 

There is another precedent particularly relevant to CNN. During Trump’s first term, the White House revoked CNN correspondent Jim Acosta’s press credential following a contentious 2018 news conference. 

CNN sued. 

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly – whom Trump appointed – ordered the White House to temporarily restore Acosta’s credential after finding serious due process problems with the way it had been revoked. The White House had not provided adequate notice or a meaningful opportunity for Acosta to contest the decision. Kelly is now the judge assigned to the lawsuit brought by CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. 

The D.C. Circuit reinforced the importance of those procedural protections two years later. 

In Karem v. Trump, the appeals court upheld an injunction against the suspension of journalist Brian Karem’s White House credential. The court concluded that Karem had not received sufficient notice that his conduct could result in the punishment imposed by the administration. 

Those cases do not establish that a White House press credential can never be revoked. Security concerns, misconduct, and neutral access rules can provide legitimate reasons for limiting access. What they make substantially more difficult is arbitrary punishment without established standards or adequate due process. 

The lawsuit also raises a separate issue from procedural due process: viewpoint discrimination. 

The government generally cannot punish a speaker because officials disagree with the speaker’s viewpoint, and Trump’s own explanation makes that issue difficult to avoid as the president did not initially announce that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were being excluded because of overcrowding, credentialing requirements, or security concerns. He directly connected the punishment to their journalism, accusing the organizations of producing false and unfavorable coverage. 

That closely resembles another recent dispute involving the Trump administration. 

In 2025, the White House restricted The Associated Press’ access after the organization declined to change its style guidance to exclusively use Trump’s preferred name, “Gulf of America,” for the Gulf of Mexico. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden – also a Trump appointee – initially ruled that the AP was likely to prevail on its claims of viewpoint discrimination and First Amendment retaliation. “The Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination, even in a nonpublic forum like the Oval Office,” McFadden wrote. 

The AP litigation also demonstrates why the current case is not entirely straightforward. 

A divided D.C. Circuit panel later allowed the administration greater discretion over whom the president admits to particularly restricted spaces such as the Oval Office and Air Force One while the litigation continued. The majority reasoned that presidents have substantial discretion over intimate or limited-access interactions with journalists. 

But CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were not merely denied one interview or excluded from one cramped Oval Office gathering. Their journalists were barred from the White House grounds and stripped of credentials used to perform their regular jobs. 

Legal experts interviewed by Reuters said Tuesday that the breadth of the restriction makes the administration’s position considerably more vulnerable, particularly because existing precedent distinguishes discretionary access to the president from the broader credentialing system available to White House journalists. 

Trump has defended the action by arguing that the First Amendment should not protect what he considers dishonest journalism. “I don’t think that a court should allow fake news to be written day after day after day,” Trump said after announcing the ban. But the First Amendment does not give the president authority to determine which news organizations are sufficiently accurate to receive constitutional protection. 

News organizations can be sued for defamation under established legal standards, reporters can be criticized, government officials can refuse interviews, dispute stories, and provide evidence they believe demonstrates that reporting is wrong. Those remedies are fundamentally different from the government using official access as punishment for editorial content. 

The significance of that distinction extends beyond CNN, MS NOW, and Politico. 

If a Republican administration could remove journalists because the president believes their stories are unfair, a Democratic administration could theoretically invoke the same power against conservative organizations.  

That concern is one reason First Amendment doctrine generally focuses not on whether government officials like a particular viewpoint, but on preventing government from using its authority to suppress viewpoints it dislikes. 

The dispute has already spread beyond the three organizations directly affected as ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Fox News and CNN jointly suspended participation in portions of the White House television pool after CNN was prevented from performing its scheduled pool duties. The networks said Americans have an interest in receiving independent information about their government and objected to excluding organizations because of their reporting. 

The practical consequences became apparent almost immediately. CNN had been scheduled for pool coverage during Trump’s trip to the United Nations but could not participate because of the ban. CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were nevertheless able to cover Trump at the United Nations using credentials issued by the U.N., illustrating that the dispute concerns White House-controlled access rather than the organizations’ ability to report generally. 

The White House, meanwhile, maintains that it has broad authority to determine who enters presidential spaces and says the banned organizations remain perfectly capable of criticizing the administration from outside the complex. 

That argument will now be tested in court. 

The fundamental question is not whether Trump has a right to dislike CNN, MS NOW, or Politico. Nor is it whether the president must grant every journalist unlimited access to himself.  The constitutional question is considerably narrower and more consequential: Once the government establishes a system providing professional journalists continuing access to White House facilities, can the president selectively revoke that access because he objects to what a particular organizations publishes? 

Decades of First Amendment and due process precedent give the three news organizations substantial grounds to argue that the answer is no. And Trump’s own statements – explicitly connecting the punishment to journalism he calls “fake news” – could provide the courts with unusually direct evidence of exactly the kind of viewpoint-based retaliation the First Amendment was designed to constrain. 

A federal judge will now determine whether those precedents require the White House to let the reporters back in. Until that happens, the administration’s action remains a contested government policy facing an unusually serious constitutional challenge.