Pentagon responds to court ruling with new press access restrictions

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced March 23, 2026, that the Defense Department would move journalists from their designated offices in the building into a separate annex and mandate escorts for journalists at the Arlington, Virginia, complex.

Parnell, in a statement, framed the rules as necessary security measures in response to a March 20 court order that declared portions of the department’s press guidelines, implemented last fall, to be unconstitutional.

The New York Times, in response, sued the department in federal court on May 18, calling the revised rules unconstitutional.

In September 2025, the Pentagon distributed new restrictions mandating that journalists pledge to obtain approval for releasing information gathered there, even if unclassified, and warning that press credentials could be revoked or denied if a journalist “is reasonably determined to pose a security or safety risk.”

Dozens of Defense Department correspondents refused to sign on to the new guidelines and were then forced to surrender their press badges.

In December, The New York Times sued the Defense Department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Parnell over the guidelines.

In March 2026, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that portions of the September guidelines under which press credentials could be revoked violated the First and Fifth amendments and could not be enforced. He also mandated that the Pentagon restore press credentials to seven Times journalists.

Three days after the ruling, Parnell announced that the Defense Department would move journalists from their designated offices in the building into a separate annex and mandate escorts for journalists at the Pentagon, framing those changes as necessary security measures.

Parnell also issued a memo to senior Pentagon leadership announcing changes to the wording of the original policy, including a change from prohibiting “solicitation” of information by reporters to “intentional inducement of unauthorized disclosure” of confidential information.

The next day, the Times filed a motion to compel the department to comply with the March 20 order, calling the new policy “an attempted end-run around this Court’s ruling” and the Pentagon’s actions “disrespectful to the Court, the Constitution, and the American public.”

Friedman agreed, granting the motion and ruling that the prohibitions on “intentional inducement of unauthorized disclosure,” the escort requirements and the access restrictions on journalists violated his March 20 order and could not be enforced.

The Pentagon immediately appealed the ruling and filed an emergency request with the appeals court to put the portion of the order reinstating journalists’ unescorted access to the Pentagon’s main building on hold.

On April 27, two members of a three-judge appellate panel allowed the request. They wrote that the escort requirement hadn’t been included in the original guidelines at the core of the Times’ lawsuit, and therefore, the district court’s March order didn’t address it. Also, they wrote, “the district court did not hold that the escort requirement independently violates the First or Fifth Amendment.”

In a dissent, Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs argued that the revised policy had clearly violated the March order and had “imposed a new access regime.”

Rather than reinstate the Times reporters’ credentials as the March order intended, Childs wrote, the revisions had substantially reduced access for all credential holders. “Reporters can hardly verify sources, gather information, or speak candidly with Department personnel with an escort looming over their shoulders,” she wrote.

Parnell applauded the majority’s ruling, writing on social media, “Despite what many in the media have told you, the Department’s policy has never been about limiting journalism — it is about safeguarding classified information that protects American lives.”

The Times then filed a new suit in federal court against the Department of Defense, Hegseth, Parnell and department advisor Timothy Parlatore. The outlet’s complaint argued that the revised policy violated both the First and Fifth amendments and asked the court to vacate it.

The filing called the revised policy “retaliatory, utterly unreasonable, and manifestly arbitrary and capricious,” and alleged the Pentagon issued it “as a means to thwart a district court order and to punish The Times both for its editorial viewpoint and its successful suit vindicating its constitutional rights.”

The Times also requested a preliminary injunction preventing the Pentagon from enforcing the escort requirement, pointing out that to ask one question of a Pentagon official, credentialed journalists “must obtain an appointment, get an escort, ask their question, and return to the library located in a separate building—only to repeat the process for the next official.”

The Department has thus made sure, the filing argues, “that certain newsworthy information—obtained through unplanned interactions between credentialed journalists and Department officials on Pentagon grounds, or through conversations with multiple press officials in different press offices—will be simply unavailable to The Times and, accordingly, the public.”