A federal judge has declined to stop the Pentagon from firing journalists from Stars and Stripes, ruling that their dismissals did not violate their First Amendment free speech rights. The journalists had sued over their terminations.
The ruling allows the Pentagon to proceed with dismissals, potentially impacting the editorial independence of the Stars and Stripes military newspaper and setting a precedent for how the First Amendment applies to public employees speaking on behalf of their official duties.
A federal judge has declined to stop the Pentagon from firing journalists from Stars and Stripes, ruling that their dismissals did not violate their First Amendment free speech rights. The journalists, including editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte, had sued to challenge their terminations.
US district judge Trevor McFadden concluded that Slavin and Korte were legally dismissed for giving interviews to CBS News as part of their official duties as public employees, rather than as private citizens. "They are being fired for giving pre-approved interviews on their paper’s behalf in which they largely toed the company line. Whatever else such a scheme may violate, it does not clearly offend the first amendment," McFadden wrote.
The lawsuit, which also named Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and the Defense Department as defendants, argued that the Pentagon illegally interfered with the publication's editorial independence. The journalists claimed they were punished for speaking out about the need for the news outlet to maintain its independence and for publishing an article detailing deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
McFadden, a Donald Trump appointee, stated that the journalists were unlikely to prove a violation of their First Amendment rights and that the publication's editorial independence was not at stake in this ruling.