U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the White House early Thursday to immediately restore press credentials for reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.
Kelly handed down the ruling in the middle of the night, just hours after presiding over an emergency hearing on a lawsuit filed by the three outlets.
The ruling is set to remain in effect for two weeks, temporarily blocking the administration from continuing to deny the journalists access to White House grounds.
The trio of news organizations launched legal action after reporters were denied entry to the White House on Saturday, citing the administration’s decision to revoke their hard press passes.
The White House sent letters to the affected outlets pointing to national security concerns as justification, but those letters were not delivered until after access had already been revoked.
Judge Kelly ruled that the ban likely violated the constitutional due process rights of the outlets and their reporters, placing the burden of that finding squarely on procedural grounds.
“Defendants do not dispute that Plaintiffs did not receive notice and an opportunity to be heard before their hard passes were revoked,” Kelly wrote in his ruling.
Kelly, himself a Trump appointee, drew on precedent from a similar case he presided over in 2018, when then-CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta had his hard pass revoked by the administration.
The rationale applied in Thursday’s ruling closely mirrors the reasoning Kelly used in the Acosta case, centering on the failure to provide adequate notice before credentials were stripped.
The case raises significant questions about press freedom, due process protections, and the extent of executive authority over media access to the White House.
The administration’s decision to target three major outlets simultaneously marks an escalation in tensions between the Trump White House and the mainstream press corps.
Legal analysts are watching the case closely, as the outcome could set important precedents governing how future administrations manage journalist access to federal facilities and officials.
