Appeals court sides with Hegseth over The New York Times in Pentagon access battle

The Pentagon is allowed to require journalists to have a government-provided escort to enter the building, a federal appeals court has ruled, delivering a blow to The New York Times.

The newspaper had said the escort policy was an attack on its First Amendment rights and was intended to punish the newspaper for its critical reporting.

But the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a ruling Thursday, said the policy applies to the entire press corps, so the New York paper was unable to prove it was targeted.

The appeals court put on hold a district judge’s ruling that had found for the newspaper and rejected Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s restrictions.

Thursday’s ruling is preliminary, and the court set an expedited schedule for briefing and oral argument to settle the matter more firmly.

The decision was 2-1, with one GOP and one Democratic appointee in the majority.

Dissenting was Judge Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee who said just because the escort policy applied to all news organizations didn’t make it constitutional.

“If threatening to impose a requirement like the escort requirement on one journalist would (as the district court found) sufficiently chill his speech, it makes little sense to suggest that effect evaporates if the government threatens to impose the same requirement on all reporters,” he wrote.

Mr. Hegseth has been on a crusade to shape reporters’ access.

He initially crafted a policy requiring journalists who got desk space in the Pentagon to agree to conditions on their reporting, such as how they used sources. Most news outlets refused to comply and lost their desk space, though they retained their credentials.

The Times challenged the policy and won in a lower court.

Mr. Hegseth then responded by adopting a new policy requiring all reporters to have an escort while at the Pentagon, even if they had credentials.

The Times sued, claiming it was retaliation against the newspaper for its successful challenge to the original policy.