The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday said the White House can't temporarily suspend the press pass of Playboy correspondent Brian Karem over an altercation with former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka in the Rose Garden last July.

In an unanimous opinion authored by Judge David Tatel, the court found the temporary suspension of the hard pass violated Karem's due process rights, as the White House had not set specific standards on when media access could be revoked. The opinion, joined by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Cornelia Pillard, upheld a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that blocked the suspension. 

It's another win for Karem's attorney, Theodore Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, who successfully represented CNN's Jim Acosta in 2018 after Acosta's hard pass was also temporarily revoked.

"We are very grateful for the powerful opinion from the D.C. Circuit and are proud to stand with Brian Karem against an administration that regularly demeans and seeks to chill freedom of the press," Boutrous said in a statement Friday. "Particularly today where journalists are facing attacks from all directions across the country, this case should let journalists know that the courts will not tolerate these unconstitutional actions."

Then-press secretary Stephanie Grishman suspended Karem's hard pass last year, finding he violated norms of decorum for White House reporters. The judges sided with Karem and Boutrous in finding the suspension violated the reporter's right to due process "because, on this record, he lacked fair notice that the White House might punish his purportedly unprofessional conduct by suspending his hard pass for a month."

Tatel wrote that a previous letter issued as a result of the Acosta case, which specifically did not set rules for press behavior at the White House, did not go far enough in showing Karem could lose the hard pass for a month, "an eon in today's news business."

"To the extent Karem's 'irreverent, caustic' attempts at humor (to use the district court's language) crossed some line in the White House's view, those transgressions were at least arguably similar to previous journalistic misbehavior that elicited no punishment at all, let alone a month's exile," Tatel wrote. "In the context of a White House press corps described as an 'unruly mob,' Karem's behavior was not so outrageous as to bring into fair contemplation the unprecedented sanction visited on him."

And the judges found the "White House's arguments to the contrary are without merit." Tatel's opinion particularly took issue with Department of Justice attorney's arguments about White House officials being able to take immediate action in cases of particularly egregious behavior by members of the press corps.

"Finally, raising the specter of the absurd, the White House argues that it cannot be the case that 'the press secretary would be powerless to take action even were a reporter to "moon" the president, shout racial epithets at a foreign dignitary, or sexually harass another member of the press corps,'" Tatel wrote. "But just as '[a] plaintiff who engages in some conduct that is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the vagueness of the law as applied to the conduct of others,' the White House cannot defend the thirty-day suspension here on the ground that some other, egregious conduct might justify the same sanction."

"In any event, the White House can rest assured that principles of due process do not limit its authority to maintain order and decorum at White House events by, for example, ordering the immediate removal of rogue, mooning journalists," the judge added.

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