On February 24, Judge Anne Nardacci of the Northern District of New York sided with Catskills-based newspaper The Reporter in denying efforts of Delaware County officials to dismiss claims they violated the paper’s First Amendment rights in retaliation for critical coverage. The Reporter is represented by Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic and Greenberg Traurig.

The suit alleges that county officials violated the news outlet’s constitutional rights when the Board of Supervisors revoked The Reporter’s designation as an official county paper in retaliation for its coverage. The designation as an “official” county paper provides a news outlet with critical advertising revenue from governmentally funded legal notices.

Until its de-designation as an official county newspaper in March 2022, The Reporter had been publishing the county’s public notices virtually since its founding in 1881. A year after the de-designation, county officials sent a letter to the co-owners of The Reporter, signed by thirty-nine county officials, demanding that they “make immediate changes” to the news outlet’s coverage of the county.

The suit also alleges that the constitutional rights of The Reporter were violated when the Delaware County attorney issued a “gag directive” prohibiting employees from freely communicating with The Reporter’s staff.

“We are seeing a disturbing trend across the state whereby local governmental bodies seek to use their power over the public purse to impact news coverage,” said Mark Jackson, director of the First Amendment Clinic. “This decision should be taken as a warning that doing so opens up officials to legal liability.”

Heather Murray

“The ruling also underscores that blanket bans on government employees talking to journalists or demands that they not communicate with journalists unless they get pre-clearance from supervisors run afoul of the First Amendment,” said Heather Murray, associate director of the First Amendment Clinic. “Importantly, the court recognized that this improper censorship enables a governmental entity to ‘destroy the immediacy’ of a public employee’s comment, ‘and thus, in many cases, its newsworthiness.’”

“We are thrilled that the court’s decision will allow us to continue to seek reinstatement as an official paper of the county. We remain committed to our mission as a government watchdog bringing greater transparency to Delaware County and protecting the right to report the truth without fear of government retaliation,” said Kim and Randy Shepard, the co-owners of The Reporter.

The Reporter is represented by Jackson, Murray, and Michael J. Grygiel of Greenberg Traurig, with critical assistance from clinic alumna Yifei Yang and law students Evan Deakin ’25, Paul Janes ’26, Celina Rivernider ’26, and Alexander Venditti ’25, through the clinic’s Local Journalism Project.

The Local Journalism Project provides pro bono legal assistance on behalf of news outlets, journalists, researchers and other newsgatherers in aid of their critical function of reporting and communicating important news and information to their communities. The Local Journalism Project also provides counsel on a range of issues crucial to the operations of community newsrooms.