A federal judge on March 20 issued an order blocking the Trump administration’s media access policy at the Pentagon after The New York Times sued over the restrictions.

The Department of War tightened its rules for the media in September 2025 after officials said reporters were roaming the halls of the Pentagon. The department took the position that the restrictions were reasonable and designed to safeguard national security.

The new rules provided that soliciting non-public information from department personnel or encouraging employees to break the law “falls outside the scope of protected newsgathering activities.” They also stated that reporters would be denied press passes if officials determined they posed a safety or security risk.

Most members of the Pentagon press corps declined to sign an acknowledgement of the new policy and lost their press passes.

In December 2025, The New York Times sued, arguing that the policy violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by restricting “journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done—ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.”

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman wrote in his new ruling that the drafters of the First Amendment “believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.”

“That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now.”

Friedman held that the Pentagon press policy ran afoul of both the First and Fifth Amendments.

Friedman repeated a comment he made in open court in which he said the federal government has been dishonest in its communications with the public about military matters in the past.

“We’ve been through, in my lifetime, you know, the Vietnam War, where the public, I think it’s fair to say, was lied to about a lot of things. We’ve been through 9/11. We’ve been through the Kuwait situation, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay.”

The judge also wrote that the department could not show that it would be harmed by the cancellation of the policy, which the judge said was vague and “fails to provide fair notice of what routine, lawful journalistic practices will result in the detail, suspension, or revocation” of a press pass.

The policy’s “true purpose and practical effect” was “to weed out disfavored journalists—those who were not, in the Department’s view, ‘on board and willing to serve,’—and replace them with news entities that are,” he wrote.

Washington-based Friedman issued a permanent injunction preventing the department from enforcing the challenged restrictions. The judge also ordered the department to reinstate the credentials of six reporters and to file a status report with the court by March 27 certifying compliance with its order.

The New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said the media organization “welcomes today’s ruling, which enforces the constitutionally protected rights for the free press in this country.”

“Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars. Today’s ruling reaffirms the right of The Times and other independent media to continue to ask questions on the public’s behalf.”

The Epoch Times reached out for comment from the U.S. Department of Justice, which represents federal agencies in court. No reply was received by publication time.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared March 20, 2026, in The Epoch Times.