The New York Times is seeking a new order that compels Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth‘s team to rescind a set of press access restrictions that a federal judge ruled unconstitutional last week.
In a filing Tuesday afternoon, the Times accused the Pentagon of “contemptuously defying” U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman’s ruling last week, which found that new restrictions on access to the complex were vague and violated the First Amendment. Among other things, the policy threatened to revoke reporters’ credentials if they solicited unauthorized information, whether classified or unclassified.
On Monday, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell unveiled a revised policy that replaced the term “solicitation” with “intentional inducement of unauthorized disclosure.”
But the Times attorneys, including Ted Boutrous and Katie Townsend, wrote in their filing that the revisions are actually new restrictions. They said that the new language would merely be a “‘rebuttable presumption’ that a reporter who offers a Department source ‘anonymity or privacy protection’ has committed a so-called ‘intentional inducement of unauthorized disclosure.’”
The Times attorneys also claimed retaliation, pointing to Parnell’s announcement that reporters will be prohibited from the Pentagon building without the escort. Parnell announced that reporter workspaces would be moved to an outside annex.
The Times attorneys wrote that “rather than comply with the court’s order and accompanying opinion,” the Pentagon team is “contemptuously defying it — both in letter and spirit in a newly released ‘interim’ policy.”
In their filing, the Times’ attorneys cited a quote that Timothy Parlatore, counsel for the Pentagon, gave to the Times reporting on the revisions. Parlatore said that the revisions “use more words to say the same thing.”
Friedman wrote in his opinion, “The Court recognizes that national security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected. But especially in light of the country’s recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing — so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election.”
The Pentagon plans to appeal the ruling.
The new restrictions, put in place last year, led to an exodus of news outlets from the Pentagon, as reporters refused to sign an agreement as a condition to renew their credentials. Major broadcast and cable networks, as well as outlets from the AP to Newsmax, departed the complex. In their place have been a number of Trump-supporting outlets, including The Federalist and One America News Network.
A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Times‘ new filing.