The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for a former Fox News reporter to be required to reveal a confidential source or pay $800 a day in court fines, in a case with broader implications for the work of journalists.
Catherine Herridge, the reporter, had refused to reveal her sources for articles she wrote about a scientist who was investigated by the F.B.I. She asked the justices to intervene after she was ordered by a federal judge to pay daily sanctions until she disclosed the information.
The justices denied Ms. Herridge’s request in a three-sentence order that did not include reasoning or a vote count, as is often the case when the court issues emergency orders. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh noted his disagreement and said he would have granted the journalist’s request.
Ms. Herridge’s case, which has alarmed First Amendment advocates, involves articles she and her colleagues wrote in 2017, when she worked at Fox News.
The articles reported that the F.B.I. had investigated the scientist, Dr. Yanping Chen, a Chinese American, over suspicions of Chinese military ties, exploring whether Dr. Chen had lied on U.S. immigration forms.
The F.B.I. ended its investigation without bringing charges against Dr. Chen, a year before Ms. Herridge and her colleagues published and aired their reporting.
In 2018, Dr. Chen sued the F.B.I. and other government agencies, accusing them of violating the Privacy Act by leaking information to Ms. Herridge. The Privacy Act has protections for personal information collected by federal agencies.
Dr. Chen sought Ms. Herridge’s testimony in the case, but Ms. Herridge invoked First Amendment protections and said she would not identify her sources.
In court filings, Dr. Chen’s lawyers said that Ms. Herridge’s “claimed right to protect her source(s) glosses over exactly what she is shielding from Chen, the courts, and the public: the identity of federal official(s) who broke the law, abused their access to sensitive records to harm a private citizen and laundered that corrupt, unlawful conduct through a reporter to escape detection.”
Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the U.S. District Court in Washington ordered Ms. Herridge to reveal her confidential sources, and in 2024 held her in civil contempt for disobeying his order. Judge Cooper said the scientist’s need for the information outweighed the journalist’s First Amendment protections.
“Herridge and many of her colleagues in the journalism community may disagree with that decision and prefer that a different balance be struck, but she is not permitted to flout a federal court’s order with impunity,” Judge Cooper wrote.
A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the decision, and the full court refused to revisit the matter.
At the appeals court, Ms. Herridge’s lawyers said that disclosing the identity of the sources would destroy her “credibility as a journalist whose assurances of confidentiality can be trusted.” Her lawyers said the court’s unfavorable ruling had undermined First Amendment protections and would “stifle news reporting that is in the public interest.”
Apart from Ms. Herridge’s emergency request, she has separately asked the Supreme Court to review the underlying merits of the lower-court rulings.
In a statement on Thursday, Fox News Media expressed disappointment with the court’s order, but said that “our commitment to defending these critical First Amendment principles remains unwavering.”
“We will be reviewing our options to further fight this injustice,” the statement added.
Andrew Phillips, a lawyer for Dr. Chen, praised the decision and said his client, “like any other American citizen, is entitled to discover the identity of the federal official(s) who abused their access to an American’s private information and leaked it to cause her harm.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press had urged the court to block the contempt order against Ms. Herridge.
“Journalists facing contempt should not have to muster large payments to the court while they seek to vindicate First Amendment rights,” Bruce D. Brown, the president of the committee, said in a statement Thursday. “Forcing them to betray source confidences always has a harmful impact on the free flow of information to the public.”
