New York Times sues Pentagon to end press escort requirement

WASHINGTON (CN) — The New York Times filed a second lawsuit against the Pentagon on Monday over an interim policy that heavily restricts reporters’ access after a federal judge struck down its prior version as clearly unconstitutional.

In a 50-page lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the news organization argues the policy is a “transparent effort to avoid complying with” Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman’s March 20 injunction vacating the original and an April 9 order gutting the interim version.

“Defendants adopted the interim policy one business day after — and in direct response to — a court order that vacated and enjoined provisions of a prior Pentagon press credentialing policy as unconstitutional," the Times said. “The department’s interim policy not only revives unconstitutional provisions vacated by that prior court order but also employs additional means of carrying forward the same impermissible, viewpoint-discriminatory aim that has motivated defendants from the beginning: closing the Pentagon to any journalist or news organization unwilling to report only what department officials approve.”

The Times argues the second lawsuit is necessary after the Pentagon continued enforcing much of the interim policy after Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, struck down most of the provisions as clearly violating his injunction.

Monday’s lawsuit comes as the news outlet’s first lawsuit against the Pentagon is pending before the D.C. Circuit, which recently revived a provision of the policy that required journalists be escorted throughout the Pentagon.

On April 27, a three-judge panel ruled 2-1 to allow the escort provision to survive as the U.S. Department of Defense’s full appeal moves forward.

U.S. Circuit Judges Justin Walker and Bradley Garcia — appointees of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, respectively — granted an emergency stay and said the Pentagon was likely to succeed on the merits that the escort requirement was not properly before Friedman, who struck down the policy in full after finding it unconstitutional.

Monday’s lawsuit now brings the escort requirement fully before the court.

Under the interim policy, credentialed journalists can only enter the Pentagon if they are invited to a press conference or if they secure a prearranged interview or meeting, both of which require an escort within the building. Further, the policy revives provisions that prohibited questions seeking information a journalist knows cannot be released, with the presumption that any granting of anonymity violates the prohibition.

The New York Times is requesting a federal judge again vacate the interim policy and the leftover escort requirement that the D.C. Circuit revived.

According to the Times, the escort requirement has caused irreparable harm to it and its journalists by restricting the kind of free movement throughout the Pentagon that has informed reporting there for decades.

“To report effectively on the department, a reporter often must speak with over a dozen officials sitting in Public Affairs offices spread throughout the building,” the Times said. “For decades, the Pentagon’s press access policies reflected this physical reality by allowing reporters unescorted access in unsecured corridors so that they can move from press office to press office and ask questions on short notice as events unfolded. The interim policy breaks sharply from that history and tradition.”

The case has yet to be randomly assigned, either to Friedman or any other judge.

“The latest filing by The New York Times, while dressed up to look like a constitutional challenge, is nothing more than an attempt to remove the barriers to them getting their hands on classified information,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. “They want to roam the halls of the Pentagon freely and without an escort — a privilege that they do not have in any other federal building. The department’s policy is completely lawful and narrowly designed to protect national security information from unlawful criminal disclosure.”

The case began with the Pentagon’s October 2025 press policy, under which journalists could be deemed a “security risk” for disclosing classified or even unclassified information without the Pentagon’s authorization. Dozens of media outlets rejected the rules.

After Friedman granted summary judgment to the Times, the news organization returned to court three days later, informing Friedman the Pentagon had instituted an interim policy that effectively maintained many of the provisions barring journalists from reporting freely and adding the escort requirement.

Friedman then granted a motion to compel on April 9, slamming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for reinstating the unlawful policy “under the guise” of taking new agency action and expecting “the court to turn a blind eye.”

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