The Supreme Court declined Thursday an application from former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge to pause an $800-per-day contempt fine. The ruling follows Herridge’s refusal to identify sources used in a 2017 report regarding a federal investigation into businesswoman Yanping Chen’s alleged ties to the Chinese military.
Supreme Court Rejects Request to Halt Daily Fines
In an unsigned order, the Supreme Court refused to stay a lower court’s order that requires Herridge to pay daily penalties for her refusal to disclose journalistic sources. The decision effectively allows the fine to proceed, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit had permitted to go into effect last month.
While the high court provided no specific reasoning for its refusal, Bloomberg Law News reported that Justice Brett Kavanaugh would have granted the application for a stay.
The financial pressure on Herridge began in 2024, when U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found her in civil contempt. The contempt charge stems from her decision to protect the identities of individuals who provided information regarding a federal probe into Yanping Chen.
Roots of the 2017 FBI Investigation
The legal battle is anchored in reporting published in 2017. At the time, Herridge was a reporter for Fox News, investigating an FBI probe into Yanping Chen, a naturalized U.S. citizen and the founder of the University of Management and Technology in Virginia. According to Deadline, the investigation focused on statements Chen made on immigration forms concerning her professional activities in China during the 1980s.
Although the FBI informed Chen that it had dropped the investigation a year before the reporting was published, and Chen was never charged with any wrongdoing, the fallout from the leaked details led to significant litigation. Chen subsequently sued the FBI and the Department of Defense, alleging a violation of the Privacy Act.
Chen’s legal team argued that the specific details included in Herridge’s reporting—including personal photographs seized from her residence—could only have been accessed by a government employee. This claim formed the basis of Chen’s efforts to discover how the materials were obtained, eventually leading her to sue Herridge after exhausting other avenues for information from the government.
The Legal Conflict Over Journalistic Privilege
The central tension in Herridge v. Chen involves a clash between the First Amendment and the protection of federal records. Herridge, who later moved to CBS News, engaged veteran Supreme Court litigator Paul Clement to argue for a qualified reporter’s privilege. Her defense maintains that this privilege, recognized by most federal circuits under specific circumstances, outweighs Chen’s interest in vindicating her privacy rights.
However, the lower courts have consistently sided with Chen. In response to Herridge’s petition to the Supreme Court, Chen’s attorneys argued that the reporter’s privilege should not serve as a shield for the illegal actions of government officials. They asserted that Herridge is attempting to protect one or more federal officials, who abused their access to protected records and violated federal law to harm Respondent Yanping Chen. Chen’s counsel noted that the lower courts have resoundingly rejected the argument for a qualified privilege in this context, applying a balancing test that has been established in the D.C. Circuit for decades.
Industry Response to the Court’s Decision
The Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene has drawn a reaction from the media industry. Fox News Media issued a statement expressing concern over the implications of the ruling for the newsgathering process.
“Protecting the confidentiality of journalistic sourcing and the integrity of the newsgathering process is fundamental to a free and functioning democracy. While we are deeply disappointed by the Court’s decision, our commitment to defending these critical First Amendment principles remains unwavering and we will be reviewing our options to further fight this injustice.”Fox News Media
As the daily $800 fines continue, the case remains a focal point for debates over whether the First Amendment can protect journalists when the information they receive is allegedly obtained through a violation of federal privacy laws.
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