On Sept. 18, 2026, President Donald J. Trump announced that he was banning reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO from access they had long enjoyed at the White House.
He said he was doing so because of their negative reporting, which he identified as “Fake News.” The next day, Betsy Klein of CNN, Akayla Gardner of MS NOW and Cheyenne Haslett of POLITICO were denied access to the White House, and their hard passes to the premises were revoked.
Viewpoint discrimination, non-public forum
On Monday, Sept. 21, 2026, the organizations filed a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Referring to the ban as a “direct assault on the First Amendment” and a “blatant violation of our most fundamental principles,” their complaint argued that they were being targeted on the basis of the “content of their coverage” of the president and his administration in a manner that constituted viewpoint discrimination.
The networks said that their ban had been done without proper notice or due process in that they were not given “advance notice based on clear standards and an opportunity to be heard.”
On a more technical matter they argued that the White House constituted “a nonpublic forum,” to which, once admitted, organizations could not be excluded on the basis of their viewpoints or on grounds that were unreasonable. In this case they argued that debarring members that the president disliked was “far too vague and arbitrary a standard to qualify as reasonable under the First Amendment and undermines the very purpose of press access to the White House, which is to facilitate fact-based reporting for the benefit of the pubic.”
Chilling effect
The complaint said that the president’s actions had an adverse effect not only on their businesses but also on the public. They also suggested that the actions would have a chilling effect upon coverage by other news organizations.
The complaint indicated that all three networks had long had access to the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, press spaces in the West Wing, and access to the North Lawn of the White House and had been part of the pool of reporters who accompanied the president and shared reporting, video, and photographs with other news outlets.
Comparison to 2018 Jim Acosta case
The complaint noted that in November 2018, a federal court had ordered that the press credentials of Jim Acosta of CNN News should be restored after Trump had attempted to exclude him after an exchange with him that Trump had disliked.
The complaint further observed that, in making his announcement, Trump has actually referred to his ban as “the ban on the free press.” He had said that he wasn’t responding to any particular story but to “cumulative stories over the last two years” that constituted “negative” and what he considered to be “dishonest” news. The complaint pointed out that this standard failed to provide fair notice and was effectively void for vagueness.
Allegation of retaliation
The complaint said that the reporters involved had both “liberty and property interests” in their press passes and access to the White House. They further alleged that their reporters had been subject to unconstitutional retaliation.
The decision by the D.C. Circuit Court in Aref v. Lynch, 833 F.3d 242 (2016) had indicated that plaintiffs could establish such retaliation by showing that they were “engaged in conduct protected under the First Amendment,” that they had suffered from retaliation “sufficient to deter a person of ordinary firmness in plaintiff’s position from speaking again,” and that there was a causal link between their exercise of First Amendment rights and the retaliation. The complaint said that the news organizations had met this burden.
In elaborating on the doctrine of a “nonpublic forum,” the complaint cited case law to indicate that “any restrictions on access to these press areas be both viewpoint neutral and reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum,” and that the government had not met either standard.
In addition to asking that the president’s action be enjoined and declared unlawful, the complaint asked for reasonable costs and attorneys’ fees.
Trump Administration’s Response
On Tuesday, September 22, 2026, attorneys from the Attorney General’s Office in the Department of Justice filed a response opposing the networks’ request for a temporary restraining order against their continuing exclusion from the White House, and granting the networks until Friday, September 25 to respond.
The response characterized the networks’ access to the White House as “a privilege—not a right.” It argued that “the White House is the official residence of the President,” and that “Presidents have long decided which journalists should receive privileged access, which has varied substantially by administration.” The response further provided examples from the presidencies of Presidents Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and Kennedy.
Quoting from Trump’s statements of September 18 and September 21 emphasizing his view that the banned networks were propagating “fake news,” it also quoted another statement that accused the networks of violating our “National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’” and saying that the Oval Office “should be treated with Decorum, Respect, and Dignity, not defiled by Third Rate Clowns, who purposefully distort, twist, and degrade with everything they write.” It cited stories the networks had aired about “’top-secret’ construction details related to the East Wing bunker” and documents dealing with security aspects of the White House ballroom.
Viewpoint Discrimination
Specifically addressing the network’s viewpoint discrimination claim, Trump argued that that the idea that restrictions on press access to a nonpublic forum must be “viewpoint neutral and reasonable” traced back to the D.C. Circuit Court decision in Sherrill v. Knight, 569 F.2d 124 (1977) and should be overturned. Reemphasizing that “Access to the White House is a privilege, not a right,” Trump pointed out that “there are currently a finite number of hard passes,” and that the president should have some control over who receives them.
Attorneys posited two compelling interests for doing so. The first (someone contradicted by Trump’s own language) was that of “enforcing minimum standards of professionalism for journalists.” The second (which appears to be a latecomer) was for “protecting classified information.”
Retaliation
Although citing the same criteria for ascertaining whether Trump’s actions constituted unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech, Trump’s attorneys argued that his action could have been justified solely on the neutral justifications of upholding journalistic standards and protecting national security.
As to due process arguments, Trump’s attorneys argued that the president had the right to decide who has access to “his home.” It also argued that the government had provide “sufficient-post-deprivation process” by explaining expected “principles of decorum” media should exercise and by giving the plaintiffs until Friday to respond.
Irreparable Home
Trump’s attorneys further argued that any burden on the networks had been minimal in that they could still access information from the meetings from which they had been excluded and that they could still broadcast from other venues. In short, “Plaintiffs seek only to maintain continued access to White House grounds to marginally improve their existing coverage of national affairs.”
The attorneys denied that any injunction could “run against the President,” but, as if anticipating a negative ruling, they asked the court to convert the motion for a temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction, to aid appeals.
District Court Decision
After hearing the case on September 23, 2026, Judge Timothy J. Kelly granted the request for a temporary restraining order the next day, but he based his decision primarily on Fifth Amendment due process claims rather than on the First Amendment. In so doing, he relied chiefly on the cases of Sherrill v. Knight (5699 F.2d 124 (D.C.. Cir. 1977) and Karen v. Trump, 960 D.3d 656 (D.C. Cir.. 2020), which had prohibited the suspension of hard press passes without such due process.
Kelly emphasized that reporters were entitled to fair notice and to a hearing prior to pass revocations. He denied that the circumstances in this case were so extraordinary as to warrant a deviation from such procedures, noting that some of the president’s complaints involved reporting dating back months or even years. He further questioned whether the actual motivation for Trump’s actions had actually centered on the protection of national security.
Kelly thus observed that Trump’s original justification for his actions dealt not with national security but with “alleged lack of truthfulness and negativity of Plaintiffs’ reportion.” He also observed that many of Trump’s complaints concerned reporters who did not even have hard passes.
The temporary restraining order lasts for 14 days and will likely be appealed.
Other events
In a show of solidarity, major television networks had halted their coverage of White House events in the interim.
The networks’ complaint appears to be on solid First Amendment grounds. Judicial rulings permit individuals to sue news organizations for disseminating libelous reports, but they require plaintiffs in cases involving public figures to prove that such reports were made with knowledge that they were false or with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity.
U.S. courts have not awarded damages for expressions of opinion, which are clearly protected by the First Amendment, and a characterization of reporting as “fake news” is far too vague a charge to be likely to justify actions against news outlets.
Judge Kelly, a Trump appointee who previously ruled in favor of Jim Acosta when the White House had suspended his credentials, had been randomly assigned to the case.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.