The Supreme Court stepped in Friday to temporarily shield former Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge from an $800-a-day fine, offering a brief reprieve in a years-long legal battle over reporter privilege that press freedom advocates say carries consequences for every journalist who relies on confidential sources.
Chief Justice John Roberts paused a lower court’s ruling from taking effect, giving the Supreme Court time to consider Herridge’s request for emergency relief. Herridge’s appellate attorney Paul D. Clement filed the petition Friday, after which Roberts issued the stay and gave the opposing party, Yanping Chen, until July 1 to file a response.
The case traces back to a series of stories Herridge reported for Fox News in 2017. Her reporting examined Chen’s ties to the Chinese military and raised questions about whether the scientist’s Virginia-based school — the University of Management and Technology, which enrolled many U.S. servicemembers on taxpayer-funded tuition — was being used to funnel information to Beijing. Federal prosecutors ultimately declined to charge Chen, but Chen sued the FBI, the Justice Department, the Pentagon, and the Department of Homeland Security in 2018, alleging those agencies violated the Privacy Act by leaking details of the investigation to Herridge.
After eighteen depositions of current and former government employees, over a dozen third-party subpoenas, and declarations from 22 officials connected to the FBI investigation, Chen’s lawyers could not identify the leaker — and turned their focus to Herridge herself. She refused to name her source, citing First Amendment protections, and U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper held her in contempt in February 2024, imposing the $800 daily fine while staying enforcement to allow for appeal.
Both the district court and the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Herridge’s arguments. Judges noted the absence of a federal shield law, leaving Herridge’s invocation of Washington D.C.’s own shield statute ineffective in a federal proceeding. The D.C. Circuit appellate court then refused, in a single-sentence order, to pause the fines while Herridge sought Supreme Court review.
Chen’s attorney Andy Phillips said courts have now ruled against Herridge five times, arguing there is no privilege protecting a federal official who broke the law to harm a private citizen by leaking protected materials. Fox News, which has continued backing Herridge legally, called the contempt order “deeply troubling.”
Press freedom organizations view the case as a referendum on the urgent need for federal legislation. The Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Seth Stern warned that the prospect of daily fines will disproportionately burden independent journalists operating without the legal support of major networks, and called on Congress to pass a strong federal shield law — specifically pointing to the stalled PRESS Act.
