New York Times files second lawsuit against Pentagon over press restrictions

The New York Times newspaper filed a second lawsuit against the Defense Department on Monday for restrictions on press access at the Pentagon implemented by the Trump administration.

The lawsuit brought by the Times and its reporter Julian Barnes names the department, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, spokesperson Sean Parnell and senior official Timothy Parlatore as defendants.

The suit alleges that the policy mandating that all reporters enter the Pentagon with an escort is "blatant retaliation" against the Times "not only for their editorial viewpoint but also for vindicating their constitutional rights in litigation."

"The interim policy is patently retaliatory, utterly unreasonable, and manifestly arbitrary and capricious. Defendants adopted 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 lawsuit says.

It was alluding to the fact that the current policy is the administration's work around after another court ruled earlier restrictions unconstitutional violations of freedom of speech.

Federal Judge Paul Friedman ruled in March that the Pentagon’s restrictions on the press ran afoul of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The policy the Pentagon adopted in response "breaks sharply" from long-standing norms at the Defense Department that allowed reporters to have "unescorted access in unsecured corridors so that they can move from press office to press office and ask questions on short notice as events unfolded," the suit says.

"To ask even one question, Barnes and other reporters must call or email for an appointment, wait for a response, get an escort, ask their question, and return to the library outside the Pentagon—only to repeat the process for the next source. Reporters must either forgo conversations or else spend hours chasing schedulers by phone and shuttling in and out of the building," it adds.

Parnell, the Pentagon spokesperson, dismissed the Times' legal action as "nothing more than an attempt to remove the barriers to them getting their hands on classified information."

"They want to roam the halls of the Pentagon freely and without an escort - a privilege that they do not have in any other federal building. The Department's policy is completely lawful and narrowly designed to protect national security information from unlawful criminal disclosure," he added on the US social media platform X.