(WASHINGTON) — The three news outlets banned from the White House by President Donald Trump on Monday filed a First Amendment lawsuit to restore their access, according to a joint statement published by CNN, MS NOW and Politico.
“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the outlets’ joint statement said.
“Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference,” it added.
Trump said in a social media post following the news on Monday that the barring of journalists was not “an assault on the Free Press” but instead “an assault on the FAKE NEWS,” which he claimed was a national security “threat.”
Trump said in a post to social media on Friday, “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America.”
At an event in the Oval Office shortly after he posted his message, the president suggested there may be more restrictions on other outlets. Trump told reporters he supports a free press, but that “you need a fair and honest press.”
“It’s sick. I mean, there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stuff. Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine. But I don’t have to let them into my, into the people’s house,” Trump said.
Journalists from the three outlets were turned away from the White House over the weekend. A reporter from CNN said on air that she was told by a Secret Service agent that her badge had been deactivated.
The three outlets are challenging the legality of the president’s ban on multiple fronts, according to the lawsuit, a copy of which was shared in Politico’s morning Playbook newsletter on Monday.
According to the document, the lawsuit will argue the ban violates the outlets’ reporters’ due process rights, that it unlawfully retaliates against their protected speech and that it violates the First Amendment by barring them from a nonpublic forum for unlawful reasons.
“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the news outlets wrote.
The lawsuit warns of a cascading effect for other news organizations should Trump seek to expand the scope of the ban, as he said he may do in his Friday remarks in the Oval Office.
“The ban is already severely impeding the ability of CNN, MS NOW, and POLITICO to cover the President and his administration,” according to the lawsuit. “Every day, critically important news is breaking at the White House and in the press pool: President Trump is the commander in chief of a country at war; he is traveling to New York today to address the United Nations General Assembly tomorrow; he is meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping at the White House on Thursday; and he is steering national policy on the ever-advancing technology of artificial intelligence. And the ban inflicts an injury on all news media organizations—who now risk a similar fate if they engage in reporting the President deems insufficiently favorable.”
The full D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court have yet to establish settled precedent in the wake of Trump’s earlier attempted ban on The Associated Press from being part of the press pool and attending certain White House events last year.
While a D.C. District court judge backed the AP, a three-judge panel with the D.C. Circuit put the ruling on hold and later wrote that “restricted presidential spaces are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion.”
Monday’s lawsuit is expected to cite a 1977 ruling in which the full D.C. Circuit found that the White House cannot arbitrarily deny a journalist a press pass without due process.
“As the D.C. Circuit has long held, the interest that members of the press have in their White House hard passes is ‘protected by the first amendment’ and ‘undoubtedly qualifies as liberty which may not be denied without due process of law under the fifth amendment,'” the attorneys wrote, according to the court papers shared by Politico.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
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