The lawsuit challenges rules that give Pentagon Secretary Hegseth broad discretion in expelling journalists over reporting.
Published December 4, 2025
The New York Times, one of the largest newspapers in the United States, has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense seeking to overturn new rules restricting access to the press.
The newspaper said in a filing Thursday that the rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violate the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees and due process provisions. They argue that this provision gives Mr. Hegseth the power to decide in his own discretion whether to expel reporters.
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Several news organizations, including the New York Times, left their offices in the Pentagon in exchange for agreeing to the new rules and reorganized the building’s press corps to primarily include news organizations deemed friendly to President Donald Trump’s administration.
“This policy is an attempt by the government to control news coverage it doesn’t like,” Charles Stadtländer, a spokesman for the paper, said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the lawsuit.
News outlets have been reporting on the military from outside the facility since October, with several stories published in recent weeks, including the so-called double-tap attack on a boat in the Caribbean that experts say may amount to a war crime.
Still, the Times argues in its lawsuit that denying access would limit its reporters’ ability to do their jobs and, in turn, “deprive the public of vital information about the U.S. military and its leaders.”
The policy established under Hegseth states that receiving or disclosing confidential information is “generally protected by the First Amendment,” but adds that requiring disclosure of such information “may be considered in considering whether it poses a security or safety risk.”
This language effectively gives Pentagon officials the right to expel reporters if they don’t like the stories they’re working on, the Times lawsuit argued.
The Pentagon said the policy imposes “common sense” rules that protect the military from the release of information that could put them at risk. Pentagon spokesman Kingsley Wilson said at a briefing Tuesday that the presence of traditional media was not overlooked.
“The American people no longer trust these propagandists because they no longer tell the truth,” Wilson said. “So we’re not going to beg these old gatekeepers to come back, and we’re not going to rebuild a broken model to appease them.”
The Pentagon Press Association, a group representing journalists who cover the Pentagon, said in a statement that it was encouraged by the paper’s “efforts to strengthen and defend press freedom.”
“The Department of Defense’s attempts to restrict how qualified reporters gather news and what information they can publish are antithetical to a free and independent press and are prohibited by the First Amendment.”
