The Press Pass
Introduction A government building can be off limits to the public. A government agent can block access for security. But when the government makes a facility available specifically so journalists can gather information, the Constitution may intervene.
What happens when the government makes such a facility available and then attempts to use it to exclude a press on the basis of what it has said? This dispute is about to be tested.
On Sept. 19, 2026, the White House barred access to journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico, after President Donald Trump announced the previous day that those outlets were banned from the White House grounds. The outlets reported that their press passes were taken away when their journalists arrived. The administration's stated rationale was that the outlets had repeatedly published what Trump characterized as false reporting.¹
The dispute raises a more general question. When a government body controls a location at which journalists gather news, is the government permitted to exclude the press on the basis of what it has said?
The First Amendment: Coverage Beyond "Publication"
The First Amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."²
Free press coverage is usually seen from the vantage point of protection from censorship. But journalists also require access to sources of information.
Reporters need access to officials, documents, hearings, press conferences and other sources of information. If a government official can decide who can and cannot receive a press pass based on what the journalist publishes, then the government can indirectly influence the information a citizen has access to without formally banning a newspaper or a television broadcast.
That is why access is a constitutionally significant issue. The dispute is not so much about whether a journalist has an absolute right of entry to a building. It is whether once a government body creates a system governing access to that building, it cannot use the system to discriminate.
The White House Press Area
The Supreme Court has never held that reporters have a general right to enter the White House. There are many parts of the White House to which both journalists and the public have no access. But courts have applied somewhat different tests to established systems for providing news to the media.
In Sherrill v. Knight, when a journalist was denied a press pass, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit observed that the White House had created press facilities for journalists who needed access to file news from the building and concluded that once those facilities had been put in place, access could not be denied "arbitrarily or for reasons less than compelling" and must have standards and procedures governing denials.³ The relevance of that dispute is that the court did not conclude that every journalist had a constitutional right to unrestrained access to the White House.
Rather, it concluded that established news-source access could not be administered without standards and procedures when the government involves First Amendment considerations in the administration of the access.
A Different Constitutionally Significant Access
The key distinction comes down to the type of access governed by a restriction. There is more leeway when the government has a smaller number of spaces to allocate.
A president cannot invite every reporter into the Oval Office, for example. A press pool must be arranged for small, space limited press events. Courts have usually given wide latitude to government officials in those logistical matters as long as selection criteria are reasonable and viewpoint neutral.⁴
But the challenge comes when not merely when access is limited, but denied due to distaste for the speech of a journalist or a news organization.
A Different Press Access Rule
In Ateba v. Leavitt in 2025, the D.C. Circuit dealt with the White House's new policy for hard passes to reporters and concluded that the new system, which imposed an outside credentialing requirement, was reasonable and viewpoint neutral.⁵
This decision is important in the current controversy because it illustrates the elements that may constitute a constitutionally permissible system of news gathering access.
The government may impose neutral requirements for credentials. It may take steps to provide security. It may limit the number of journalists issuing credentials. It may impose legitimacy tests on journalists. What it may not easily do is replace the journalist's viewpoint with neutral criteria.
Viewpoint Versus Security
Suppose the government excludes a reporter because the Secret Service concludes that the journalist poses a genuine security threat. That is fundamentally different from excluding the journalist because the government finds him or her to be unfair.
In the first instance, the government is concerned about physical safety. In the second, it is about expression. The First Amendment is supremely concerned with government decisions that involve the content or viewpoint of protected expression.⁶ But that does not mean that all government-media disputes are per se unconstitutional disputes.
A journalist may violate a neutral security rule. A credential may be denied on a legitimate administrative basis. A government building's rules for access may be entirely appropriate. What must be carefully examined is the basis for the exclusion.
The Current Dispute
The White House's September 18 announcement is challenging from a legal standpoint because the stated basis was the outlets' reporting. Reuters wrote that the White House banned the outlets because of the "cumulative stories over the past few years" and described the outlets' reports as "FAKE NEWS."¹ On Sept. 19, journalists from the three outlets were denied access and the outlets' news teams' press passes were confiscated.¹
The government may argue that the outlets are free to publish whatever they want and that no journalist may have an absolute right to enter the White House. Those arguments have some constitutional merit.
The outlets, however, may argue that being excluded from a White House facility where they have had established access is a government hindrance to news gathering and that the basis for the exclusion is viewpoint discrimination.
Procedural Considerations
Access also raises a related procedural issue. In Sherrill, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the government should have standard operating procedures for denying or suspending journalists' press credentials.³ The basis was that journalists have a general First Amendment right to know the rules and to have standards and procedures when the access is denied.
That principle is particularly relevant if a journalist who has previously been issued a press pass suddenly loses access. The journalist may need to know what rule was violated, who made the decision and the basis on which that conclusion was reached, what evidence may be presented against the journalist and whether the same rule is applied to others.
Procedural protections do not give every journalist recourse on a news gathering dispute. But they do forbid access rules that are merely assertions by officials.
The Public's Interest Too
Press access disputes are sometimes framed as between governments and the press. But there is a third party: the public.
The press acts as an intermediary between government and the public. Reporters attend briefings, question officials, observe government operations and transmit information to the public.
The D.C. Circuit recognized that, in Sherrill, noting that the public has a First Amendment basis for desiring that first amendment news gathering restrictions not be more burdensome than necessary and for desiring that journalists not be arbitrarily excluded from newsgathering sources.³ That does not give each citizen a general constitutional entitlement to every government source of information. It does set out why access can be a concern involving more than the rights of the journalist.
The Constitutionally Significant Issue: Regulating Access Versus Expression
The First Amendment does not grant the government the ability to be completely disengaged in regulating its facilities.
Security remains a legitimate governmental interest. Limited spaces need to be allocated reasonably. Credentialing systems need standards. Agencies must be able to protect their operations. But those issues do not override constitutional limits on access regulation.
The central distinction is between regulating access to first amendment-covered information and punishing expression. A neutral credentialing rule is a regulation of access. An exclusion based on viewpoint may be a regulation of expression.
Why It Matters
The Press Pass matters because modern journalism more and more depends not on access to printing presses, but rather to sources within institutions.
Officials control briefings, databases, interviews, press rooms and credentials. If these access points can be shut down by a government agency whenever they dislike a particular outlet's reporting, the government can dictate the way information flows without censoring any particular report. That is why legal rules relating to access to the press are significant.
The Constitution does not require the White House to admit every journalist anywhere. But once government builds a press-access system, the rules governing that system cannot merely be things said by the government.
Conclusion
The White House has legitimate interests in its security, administration and control over access to limited spaces. Journalists have legitimate interests in gathering news. The public has a legitimate interest in information about its government. Those interests can all coexist. The Constitution's challenge is ensuring that the government's control over access isn't just a back door mechanism for controlling expression. A president may determine who enters a particular room for legitimate reasons. But when access to government becomes a condition for saying things about government, the press is no longer being managed. It is being regulated. The government maybe controls its doors. But it cannot utilize its doors to control what the press says.
Reuters, "White House turns away CNN, MS NOW, Politico reporters after Trump's ban," Sept. 19, 2026. Reuters reported that the White House denied access to journalists from the three outlets after Trump's announcement and the outlets' press passes were confiscated.
U.S. Const. amend. I.
Sherrill v. Knight, 569 F.2d 124, 128-30 (D.C. Cir. 1977).
See NRA Political Victory Fund v. FEC, 6 F.3d 821, 824-25 (D.C. Cir. 1993); see also Ateba v. Leavitt, 121 F.4th 1212, 1221-27 (D.C. Cir. 2025).
Ateba v. Leavitt, 121 F.4th 1212, 1220-27 (D.C. Cir. 2025). The D.C. Circuit upheld the White House Hard Pass Policy, concluding that the outside credentialing requirement was reasonable and viewpoint neutral.
See Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 828-29 (1995) (viewpoint discrimination is an especially serious First Amendment concern).
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