A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked an order requiring LinkedIn to give the Trump administration extensive private data on a group of reporters for a leak investigation, ruling that it went too far and would reveal the identities of numerous unrelated confidential sources.
The ruling did not identify the article or news organization at issue. But aspects of the decision, which centered on the administration’s request for 18 months’ worth of data, raised the possibility that it involved a known leak inquiry into a New York Times article disclosing a botched military operation in North Korea in 2019.
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., sent the dispute back to a district court judge to narrow the order. Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Judge Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, stressed the importance of First Amendment press freedoms.
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