A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Pentagon rule requiring journalists to be accompanied by official escorts while inside the building, ruling the policy violates the First Amendment.
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Judge Paul L Friedman of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued the preliminary ruling on Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by The New York Times, which challenged the escort requirement as an unconstitutional infringement of press freedoms.
The decision bars the Defense Department from enforcing the rule against Times reporters, though it does not specify whether journalists from other outlets will receive the same relief. The Times has been locked in a legal battle with the Pentagon since October, when the department first began tightening media access.
The escort requirement was introduced in March, just one business day after Friedman struck down an earlier set of Pentagon restrictions on press access. In that ruling, he sided with The Times, which had challenged a policy allowing the department to revoke press passes from journalists deemed "security risks."
The Pentagon then issued a revised set of rules that included the escort requirement, which was not addressed in the original case. In a preliminary ruling in April, an appellate court allowed the Pentagon to keep the policy while litigation continued. The Times filed a second lawsuit in May specifically targeting the escort rule.
In Tuesday's ruling, Friedman said the policy independently violates the Constitution. "This court has spoken at several points about the critical importance of protecting the freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment, and that evergreen message bears repeating," he wrote.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell pledged to appeal, saying the ruling "strips away reasonable security measures and will make it easier for sensitive and classified information to reach our adversaries."
The Pentagon has argued that the escort policy is essential to protecting national security, claiming journalists had used their roaming privileges to access sensitive information. Department officials also argued there is no First Amendment right to "the most convenient form of access."
The Times welcomed the ruling. "Today's well-reasoned decision reaffirms the First Amendment rights of the press to cover the Pentagon without restrictions designed to prevent the public from knowing what the military is doing," a spokesperson said.
