A US federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a judge must narrow an order directing LinkedIn to hand over journalists’ communications to the Trump administration as part of an investigation into the leaking of classified information.
A three-judge panel of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the government cannot demand a blanket disclosure of a wide range of user records belonging to the journalists, whose employer was not identified in court documents.
Allowing the government to collect reporters’ records wholesale to identify their confidential sources would undermine informed public discourse and harm democratic health, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote in the unanimous ruling.
However, the panel rejected LinkedIn’s request to completely overturn the district court’s disclosure order, describing it as substantially overbroad. It said the journalists’ First Amendment rights must be weighed against the administration’s responsibility to safeguard national security information.
"Serious security and speech claims are in tension in this case. There is space under law for both," Wilkinson wrote. He was nominated to the appeals court by former Republican President Ronald Reagan.
The panel also included Judge James Andrew Wynn, nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama, and Judge Nicole G. Berner, nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden.
The disclosure order was issued by US District Judge Elizabeth Hanes, a Biden nominee based in Newport News, Virginia, and was subsequently challenged by LinkedIn.
The Trump administration launched the leak investigation after an unidentified news organisation published a report detailing a top-secret US military operation in a foreign country, disclosing classified information.
During the 18-month period covered by the court order, the journalists under investigation had reported nearly 1,000 stories on a wide range of subjects.
The order would have exposed every confidential source with whom the targeted journalists communicated through LinkedIn during that period.
Although such a disclosure could help the government identify sources relevant to its investigation, it would also inevitably expose numerous other confidential sources unrelated to the probe, Wilkinson wrote.
The appeals court sent the case back to Hanes, instructing her to revise and narrow the disclosure order.
The district court was justified in giving the government considerable leeway to pursue its investigation and protect its integrity, Wilkinson said. However, he stressed that such authority has limits and that courts should not approve disclosure requests simply because the requested records can be collected easily.