NPR Attorney: Trump's Directive 'Blatantly Unconsitutional'

National Public Radio has hired a pair of prominent lawyers at law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, including one-time Republican federal appeals court nominee Miguel Estrada, for its lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of illegally cutting public broadcasting funds.

Reuters reports NPR and a group of public radio stations sued the administration in federal district court in Washington on Tuesday, accusing it of trampling their rights to speech and association under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

President Donald Trump earlier this month issued an executive order to cut federal funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service.

Estrada, who has argued 24 cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush in 2001 to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but Senate Democrats did not allow him to advance.

He is working with Gibson Dunn's Theodore Boutrous Jr, who has represented media outlets for years in First Amendment fights. Boutrous was a lead attorney for CNN in 2018 in a lawsuit accusing the first Trump administration of unlawfully revoking a reporter's press credentials.

Boutrous in a statement said Trump's executive action against NPR was "blatantly unconstitutional" and violated the rights of the organization and its member stations.

In the suit, NPR said Trump’s order runs counter to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which prohibits federal agencies from controlling the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the umbrella organization that oversees government funding for the Public Broadcasting Service and NPR. 

The administration has accused, opens new tab NPR and the PBS of bias and called for an end to public funding of news media.

In a statement, a White House spokesperson said Trump was exercising his lawful power to limit funding to NPR and PBS, which is not a plaintiff.

Other Trump targets have also turned to lawyers with conservative credentials to sue the administration.