Media outlets renew push for access to secret spy court decisions

A group of prominent media companies, including the New York Times and Bloomberg, are fighting a decision by America’s secret spy court to exclude a media advocacy group from seeking access to the court’s rulings.

In a petition, the media companies complained that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ”ignored Supreme Court precedent” by ruling that the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School had no standing to seek access to decisions that explain why the NSA can collect millions of phone and email records. The claims set out in the petition -- which was also signed by entities like Politico, the New Yorker and the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press -- appear to provide further grist to a claim by the New York Times in July that the secret FISA court ”has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court,” issuing its own series of rulings on important constitutional questions.