A federal judge on Friday delayed for one week the Pentagon’s planned firing of three Stars and Stripes journalists who sued, claiming the Defense Department is retaliating against them for warning that the military newspaper is losing its editorial independence.
The one-week reprieve for reporter Lara Korte, Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and publisher Max Lederer was announced during a hastily convened hearing in Washington on a lawsuit they filed Thursday. The suit argues that dismissing them would violate the First Amendment.
All three remain on administrative leave.
Their lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden for a temporary restraining order that would keep them in that status while the case proceeds. McFadden, a Trump appointee, did not immediately grant the order.
The journalists say the real trigger was an earlier Stars and Stripes story about deteriorating mental health among sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln while the carrier was deployed in the Persian Gulf.
During the roughly 30-minute hearing, Justice Department lawyers and the journalists’ attorneys clashed over whether a restraining order was warranted and whether Korte and Slavin were speaking in their official capacity. McFadden noted they obtained superiors’ approval before the CBS interview, which he said could mean the comments were official speech and therefore unprotected under Supreme Court precedent. “They did get sign-off,” the judge said.
A lawyer for the journalists replied that they were simply following Pentagon rules for media interviews.