April 27, 2026 / 8:57 PM EDT / CBS/AP
The Defense Department can require journalists to be escorted on Pentagon grounds while the Trump administration appeals a judge’s decision to block its enforcement of a new press access policy, an appeals court ruled Monday.
A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the administration is likely to succeed in showing the policy’s escort requirement is legally valid. The panel granted the government’s request to suspend an April 9 decision by U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, who had ruled the Defense Department was violating an earlier order to restore reporters’ access to the Pentagon.
Last fall, the Pentagon required reporters who cover the military to agree to a set of restrictions to retain daily access. Many outlets — including CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, CNN and Fox News — declined to sign. The New York Times sued, and Friedman struck down parts of the policy last month, finding several restrictions unconstitutional, including a provision that suggested reporters who “solicit” sensitive information from military personnel could be deemed a security risk and expelled.
Earlier this month, Friedman found the Pentagon violated his order by issuing a revised policy that barred reporters from the building unless accompanied by government escorts. In Monday’s ruling, Circuit Judges Justin Walker and Bradley Garcia — appointees of Presidents Trump and Biden, respectively — wrote that “an agency may respond to an adverse ruling by adopting a revised policy.”
Biden-appointed Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs dissented. “Reporters can hardly verify sources, gather information, or speak candidly with Department personnel with an escort looming over their shoulders,” she wrote.
Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell welcomed the panel’s decision and said the department looks forward to arguing the merits before the same panel. In a social media statement, Parnell said unescorted access to the Pentagon has led to the “regular unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified national defense information.” “Since implementing the current access policy, the Department has seen a meaningful reduction in these unauthorized disclosures, which when they occur can endanger the lives of service members, intelligence personnel, and our allies,” he wrote.
Theodore Boutrous, an attorney for The New York Times, called the ruling “a narrow, preliminary one” and said it “casts no doubt” on the strength of the newspaper’s constitutional arguments. “We look forward to defending the full scope of the district court’s rulings in The Times’s favor in this appeal,” he said.