The White House letter began by rebutting CNN’s claim that “there are no so-called ‘widely understood practices’ governing the conduct of journalists covering the White House.”

Judge Kelly, who ordered the temporary restoration of Acosta’s credentials pending further review, found on Friday that Trump had violated Acosta’s Fifth Amendment due-process rights by yanking his press pass without notice, a hearing, or an opportunity to offer a rebuttal.

Read: The fight over Jim Acosta’s press pass is only beginning

The Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts was first to the news Monday, tweeting: “@WhiteHouse to not seek revocation of @Acosta hard pass—sources.” The ABC White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, who also serves as vice president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, elaborated. “A senior WH official tells me the White House is dropping its effort to ban Jim Acosta for his behavior at the Nov 7 press conference,” Karl tweeted. “The office says, however, the White House reserves the right to revoke Acosta’s pass if he violates White House decorum in the future.”

Jonathan Peters, a media-law professor at University of Georgia and a press-freedom correspondent for Columbia Journalism Review, responded: “The constitutionality of this approach, if this turns out to be true, would depend on how the White House defines and applies the concept of ‘decorum.’”

Olivier Knox, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, told me this week that there aren’t set rules governing correspondents’ behavior. “Same with press conferences,” he said via email. “And press secretaries have very different styles, and different approaches to calling on people. So under some administrations, press conferences are rowdy, with shouted questions. Under [President George W. Bush], the president came to press conferences typically with a list of people to call on. Same with Obama. But (famously) women reporters wore red to Reagan pressers in the hopes of getting called on in what were much more free-for-all [conferences].”

Read: Jim Acosta’s dangerous brand of performance journalism

George Condon, the White House correspondent for National Journal, expressed some relief that this was settled out of court. “We’ve gone 100 years working out things between the Correspondents’ Association and the White House, and the last thing we want is a judge deciding on how [the press] operates,” he said.

In a phone interview on Monday afternoon, Condon walked me through the history of the debate between the White House and reporters regarding “decorum” in briefings. He describes Reagan as pivotal in resetting a tense relationship between the press and the White House in the administrations following the Watergate scandal. “Reagan wanted to go back to what he had in Sacramento, and reporters realized they weren’t looking good [shouting at press conferences]. So, Reagan struck a deal: ‘I’ll call on as many of you as I can, as long as you raise your hand.’” That agreement seemed to govern from Reagan’s presidency until Trump’s, Condon added, when the relationship began to “break down,” in part due to the infrequency of press briefings and presidential press conferences.