Trump's Love-Hate Relationship With the First Amendment

President Donald Trump’s war on the news media violates the spirit of the free press. How far can he go before he violates the letter of the First Amendment? Case in point: the exclusion of CNN, the New York Times, Politico and other media outlets from a White House press briefing Friday. It violates the basic constitutional ideal that the government can’t discriminate among various speakers on the basis of their viewpoints. Under existing case law, however, the exclusion probably doesn’t violate the Constitution, because the news outlets remain free to speak despite losing a degree of access.

To see why the White House’s actions were so constitutionally pernicious, begin with the U.S. Supreme Court’s modern interpretation of the First Amendment. The core concept is that the government can’t target certain ideas because of the perspective that they embody. The court calls this “viewpoint discrimination.” And it’s considered so serious a violation of free speech that it applies in areas that were traditionally considered exempt from the First Amendment, such as obscenity and libel.