“Trump’s revocation of Acosta’s credentials is, simply put, out of line,” Bruce Brown, the executive director of RCFP, said on a conference call. “It’s decidedly out of step with the traditions of freedom of speech and of the press enshrined in our Constitution, at the heart of our democracy, and long respected by presidential administrations of both parties even in moments of great tension between the president and the press.”

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement that called the CNN lawsuit “more grandstanding” and said that the White House will “vigorously defend” against it. “The White House cannot run an orderly and fair press conference when a reporter acts this way, which is neither appropriate nor professional,” Sanders wrote. “The First Amendment is not served when a single reporter, of more than 150 present, attempts to monopolize the floor. If there is no check on this type of behavior it impedes the ability of the President, the White House staff, and members of the media to conduct business.”

The Trump White House pivoted from its earlier accusations that Acosta assaulted a White House intern when the intern tried to grab his microphone, a false claim further complicated by the fact that Sanders shared a doctored video from Infowars to support her claim on Twitter last week.

“The initial justification given, that Acosta made physical contact with the young intern, has been proven to be unjustified, as we have seen by watching the video countless times and through eyewitness reports from people who were seated right next to Acosta when the incident took place,” Frank Sesno, the director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, said in an email Tuesday. “The White House has to be held accountable to facts and to process. It’s time they learn to respect both.”

Joshua Geltzer, the executive director of Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, acknowledged that there’s a legitimate argument in favor of decorum in White House press events, but said that this was not the issue at hand here.

“The [RCFP] brief recognizes that there is a certain prerogative on the part of the White House to ensure security and even, in some reasonable way, ensure decorum, in part to allow news gathering to occur, to allow questions to be asked and answered, to allow different voices to have that opportunity so that they can ask questions on behalf of ... their readers and viewers and followers,” Geltzer said on the conference call. “But one only needs to look at the video here to see that this was nothing wildly out of bounds, this was nothing out of character for the setting.”

Jaffer agreed that the issue of decorum is relevant, but falls short in this case given how the incident played out.