White House Files Motion in CNN Lawsuit: ‘No Journalist Has a First Amendment Right to Enter the White House’CNS News, Nov 14, 2018, Melanie Arter
The White House responded Wednesday to a lawsuit filed by CNN over the revocation of White House Correspondent Jim Acosta’s press pass, asking the U.S. District Court of District of Columbia to dismiss CNN’s claim that the decision violated the Constitution.
The White House’s lawyers filed a motion claiming that Acosta “disrupted the fair and orderly administration of a press conference†by refusing to give back the microphone to a White House intern when President Donald Trump refused to answer any more of his questions.
“No journalist has a First Amendment right to enter the White House and the President need not survive First Amendment scrutiny whenever he exercises his discretion to deny an individual journalist one of the many hundreds of passes granting on-demand access to the White House complex,†the motion stated.
CNN and Acosta did not prove there was “irreparable†harm necessary for such a claim, the attorneys said. In addition, there are about 50 other CNN staffers who do have hard passes to the White House.
“The public interest does not require that Mr. Acosta be given immediate access to the White House complex. The public can benefit from his reporting from outside the complex during preliminary injunction briefing, and is additionally well-served by the numerous other journalists who retain their hard passes and who will continue to tenaciously ask questions at press events, just as they have done since the revocation of Mr. Acosta’s pass,†the White House said.
Furthermore, revoking Acosta’s hard pass was necessary because his behavior "impedes other reporters from asking questions provides a more-than-sufficient reason for revoking his hard pass.â€
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