A federal judge has clarified that journalist Catherine Herridge will not have to pay $800-a-day civil-contempt fines while she seeks Supreme Court review. The ruling matters because it temporarily protects her from accumulating financial penalties over her refusal to identify a confidential source, a dispute that raises wider questions about press freedom and source protection.

Judge Christopher Cooper imposed the fines after Herridge declined to reveal the source behind 2017 Fox News reports on a federal investigation into Yanping Chen’s links to the Chinese military. Chen, who was never charged, sued the government under the Privacy Act over the alleged disclosure; Cooper has now stayed the fines through the Supreme Court process and ordered any payments already made to be returned.