One of the most ominous legal threats to the free press in decades is quietly looming in a New York courtroom, largely unnoticed outside the newspaper industry but potentially devastating to democracy. A judge has issued a ruling that violates the First Amendment on its face by engaging in prior restraint — that is, not merely punishing a newspaper for something it has printed, but preventing it in advance from printing specific information or even investigating a specific topic.

It's a historically rare, extreme form of government censorship that, in the few times it's been attempted in modern America, has generally centered on issues of national security. The current case has nothing to do with that. If today's U.S. Supreme Court majority truly adheres to the originalist principles it claims, it will quickly end this dangerous threat against a core tenet of the Constitution.

The prior-restraint ruling last month by New York state Judge Charles D. Wood comes in a defamation suit against The New York Times by Project Veritas, the right-wing trolling organization that uses sting operations and other deceptive stunts in attempts to embarrass liberal politicians and the news media. Separately from that suit, the Times had published reporting based on internal Veritas documents it had obtained — including memos from the group's lawyer, advising the group how far it could go in its sting operations "before running afoul of federal laws."

Veritas argues that the Times, by publishing internal legal advice, was interfering with attorney-client privilege as it relates to the defamation suit. Essentially, they asked a judge to make the newspaper stop reporting on them.

Wood on Nov. 18 did just that, ordering the Times to temporarily cease publication of additional articles based on the internal Veritas documents, and to "cease further efforts to solicit or acquire" such materials. As of this week, it was unclear how long that order would be in place.

Wood has described the debate as a conflict between two "bedrock principles" of law: "freedom of the press, and attorney-client privilege." Not to dismiss the importance of the latter, but those two imperatives are not on the same plane. The Founders put freedom of the press in the first line of the First Amendment because, without that freedom, no others can be protected.

The last time the Times faced prior restraint was 1971 — half a century ago — when the Nixon administration argued that the Pentagon Papers had to be suppressed for the sake of national security. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling the administration hadn't met the heavy burden of proof for such an extreme infringement of a constitutional right.

If that was a hard decision, this one shouldn't be. Failure to slap down the New York ruling, and slap it down hard, could crack open a door to routine censorship that would be difficult to close.

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