Six plaintiffs challenge White House press bans without seeking damages

Plaintiffs say access restrictions deprive the public of reporting and distort coverage

Six plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration’s White House media bans asked a New York federal court to block enforcement of the bans, and the suit does not request financial damages. Instead, the plaintiffs ask that the defendants cover their legal fees if they prevail. The Knight First Amendment Institute and Yale Law School’s Media and Information Access Clinic filed the case on the plaintiffs’ behalf, according to the court filings.

The lawsuit, brought by press freedom groups, challenges the White House’s efforts to block mainstream US news outlets from covering the White House, according to the court filings. The six plaintiffs include scholars, advocates and journalists, and they asked the court to declare that the White House’s selective media bans violate the First Amendment and to block further enforcement of them. In the court filings, the plaintiffs allege they are no longer able to do their work without access to information delivered by the White House press. The BBC described the First Amendment as a critical statute that provides broad protections for the press and freedom of speech.

The White House policy, the plaintiffs claim, “deprives the public” of reporting, and it forces journalists who cover Donald Trump “to account for the possibility that a critical or ill-advised word about the president may result in their access being summarily restricted or revoked”. The court filing argues that such a ban has a “distorting effect” on coverage from the White House.

The suit comes after CNN, Politico and MSNOW brought a separate legal challenge over the White House’s attempts to revoke or restrict their press access. Last month, the White House banned reporters from those three outlets, leading several other media organisations to temporarily suspend their pooled coverage of the president in protest. The affected outlets sued, arguing that the White House was illegally discriminating against them because of the content of their coverage.

A federal judge later ordered the White House to restore the credentials of the impacted journalists while that lawsuit plays out, and the reporters later said they were allowed back into the White House complex. BBC reporting published on 22 September described major US outlets suspending shared Trump coverage in protest at the media ban, and a report published on 25 September said media outlets banned by Trump resumed White House coverage after the judge’s order.

The White House has, however, continued to selectively bar journalists, which news organisations in the US argue violates their press freedom protections. CNN has threatened to take further legal action in court as its reporters continue to be denied access aboard Air Force One to cover the president. Last week, the White House banned a correspondent from The Independent from covering the president’s trip to the state of Iowa, after Trump berated the reporter from the UK news outlet during a press conference.

Since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, the White House has engaged in a contentious standoff with many longstanding US media outlets, which the president has frequently accused of publishing “fake news”. In his second term, Trump has also moved to bring conservative bloggers, influencers and other “new media” figures into the press room, arguing it is necessary to provide diverse perspectives in White House coverage.

In February, the White House announced it was taking control of the press pool, the small group of journalists that has access to the president on any given day, which for more than a century had been managed by the White House Correspondents’ Association. The same month, the White House moved to bar Associated Press journalists from spaces where access is limited, such as the Oval Office or Air Force One, because the outlet used the term “Gulf of Mexico” rather than “Gulf of America”. AP filed a lawsuit, and the case remains ongoing.

Trump last week confirmed he is considering moving the entire press corps from the White House grounds, following reports he was contemplating the reconstruction of a swimming pool that sits underneath the James S Brady briefing room. “I am thinking about moving the press, and putting them in a different location,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I will use that location for very badly needed space.”

In the six-plaintiff case, the plaintiffs seek no damages and ask only that the defendants cover their legal fees if they win. The BBC has asked the White House for comment.