'A Privilege, Not a Right': Justice Dept. Asks Judge to Toss CNN Suit

Justice Department lawyers say the president can weigh a reporter's viewpoint when deciding who gets into the complex.

Justice Department lawyers asked a federal judge on September 23, 2026, to throw out a lawsuit over White House press restrictions. The suit was brought by CNN, MS NOW and Politico, NPR reported.

If that argument wins, a White House press pass becomes something an administration can hand out and pull back at will, and the correspondents who work the driveway and the briefing room keep their spots only as long as the president likes what they file.

The sentence at the center of it was written by Michael Velchik, a senior counsel at the department. "After all, access to the White House is a privilege—not a right," the filing said, as quoted by NPR and NBC News.

The department leaned on last year's ruling that let the administration keep the Associated Press out of spaces like the Oval Office. That reasoning reaches the entire White House complex, the filing argued, ABC News reported. There's, the brief said, "no principled way of easily distinguishing between rooms that are a nonpublic forum and those that are no forum at all," the outlet reported.

It doesn't stop at forum doctrine. The president should be able to "consider journalists' viewpoints" in deciding who gets access, the filing argued, and the department asked the court to overturn the landmark decision affirming reporters' access, per ABC News.

Two claims sit side by side in the same brief: that the White House isn't obliged to answer reporters' questions at all, and that it may weigh those reporters' viewpoints when deciding who stands close enough to ask.

That landmark decision is Sherrill v. Knight, from 1977. The news organizations' complaint rests on it.

Times Now, citing CNN's reading of the same filing, reported that the government also raised a national security risk in defending the ban.

Next, the three news organizations answer the brief, and a judge decides whether the case goes forward. The department has asked that it be thrown out.

Source: npr.org, retrieved September 23, 2026.