A federal judge in Washington ruled Thursday that the Pentagon violated his order to restore access for New York Times journalists, finding that the Defense Department’s revised “interim” policy unconstitutionally sidestepped his earlier ruling. The judge also rebuked the Trump administration, likening its suppression of speech to that of an autocracy.
After Senior U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled in March that the Defense Department’s press policy violated the First and Fifth amendment rights of the New York Times and one of its reporters, Julian E. Barnes, top officials at the Pentagon introduced a revised policy that would have, among other things, moved journalists from their dedicated workspace inside the five-sided building to an external “annex” in a library and conference center.
The Washington Post was among dozens of outlets that walked out of the Pentagon in October rather than agree to a new press policy conditioning access on reporters’ promising not to solicit any unauthorized information, a policy widely decried by mainstream news organizations and press freedom advocates.
Friedman wrote in an opinion Thursday that the revised policy still prevents journalists from “inducing” unauthorized disclosures — the same unconstitutional restriction he had already struck down — just with new language.
The judge used a top Pentagon official’s own words to overturn the policy. “We used more words to say the same thing and to foreclose creative misinterpretations,” Timothy Parlatore, a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, told the Times in a recent interview. Parlatore authored the press policies.
“Today’s decision upholds our constitutional rights again and sends a clear message to the Pentagon,” Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander wrote in a statement after the ruling. “Compliance with a lawful order of a court is not optional; it is required in a democracy committed to the rule of law. 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.”
Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a partner at the law firm Gibson Dunn who represented the Times in court, cheered the judge’s order. “This ruling powerfully vindicates both the Court’s authority and the First Amendment’s protections of independent journalism,” he wrote in a statement.
The Defense Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The judge also ruled that the Pentagon’s closure of the Correspondents’ Corridor, the dedicated press workspace inside the building, and its ban on unescorted movement throughout the Pentagon, were “transparent attempts” to undermine the access his original order had restored. He ordered the Defense Department to fully restore Times reporters’ access and file a sworn declaration from a department official by April 16 detailing compliance.
Friedman concluded his opinion with an unusually sharp rebuke of the Trump administration.
“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 want them to hear and see,” he wrote. “The Constitution demands better. The American public demands better, too.”
He continued: “The curtailment of First Amendment rights is dangerous at any time, and even more so in a time of war. Suppression of political speech is the mark of an autocracy, not a democracy — as the Framers recognized when they drafted the First Amendment.”
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