Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sits during a meeting with Australia's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Richard Marles at the Pentagon, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).
A judge quickly found Friday that Stars and Stripes journalists facing Pentagon termination notices can't at this stage win a preliminary injunction, even though they spoke on "matters of public concern."
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden said that perhaps "discovery will strengthen" the cases of editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer, and reporter Lara Korte down the line, but as things stand, they are "unlikely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claim and do not demonstrate irreparable harm."
"An internal dispute about the proper role of Stripes broke into the open in a segment produced by CBS News. The fallout and resulting lawfare require the Court to confront the limits of First Amendment protections for public employees speaking about their jobs," wrote McFadden, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term.
Slavin and Korte appeared on CBS in July for a segment titled "The Battle over Stars and Stripes." The segment featured Slavin and Korte on camera in Stars and Stripes' workspaces defending the civilian employees' independence from Pentagon pressure.
"Don't run a perfectly accurate story, run this instead. Here it is, written by the Pentagon. That would be a red line," Slavin said, according to his Aug. 27 complaint.
"I'm working for Stars and Stripes … not for the Pentagon, not for an administration, not for any policymaker. I'm here to cover the military community," Korte said of her role. "I don't feel like I've been stopped from covering any specific story."
The judge said the underlying events "suggest that they spoke as part of their official duties and not as private citizens," tipping the balance in the government's favor at this stage of the case.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden (U.S. District Court)
The complaint named Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's chief public affairs spokesman, Sean Parnell, as the lead defendant, claiming that his "attempted January 2026 repeal" of the Stripes Regulations, to move the publication away from "woke distractions," represented a direct threat to Stars and Stripes' decades-long "editorial independence" — all "without notice or opportunity for public comment."
The plaintiffs further alleged the "spark that moved Defendants to act" and assert control over Stars and Stripes in an act of "retaliation" was the Aug. 11 report "USS Abraham Lincoln families press Navy leaders over sailors' mental health" amid more than eight months of deployment at sea for the Iran War.
The DOJ pushed back on that claim, saying the notices of separation were "complete five days before the USS Lincoln article was published, and the decisions they proposed predated it by three weeks," making that "retaliatory" firing "alternative theory" a losing claim.
Regardless, the government argued, the plaintiffs did not show they are suffering "irreparable harm," as they are on "paid administrative leave" as the disciplinary matter proceeds.
McFadden agreed Friday that the plaintiffs' motion failed.
"On the relatively bare record now before the Court, Plaintiffs do not carry their significant burden to show that they likely spoke as private citizens. Plaintiffs' own declarations about their jobs and the CBS News interview create this shortcoming. As things stand, they have pled themselves out of a preliminary injunction."
"Perhaps discovery will strengthen Plaintiffs' case. But at bottom, on the current record, Plaintiffs' real complaint seems to be that they were victims of a cruel bait-and-switch. 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," the judge concluded.