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Lin Weeks

Senior Staff Attorney
Senior Staff Attorney Lin Weeks

Lin Weeks is a senior staff attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which he joined in 2019. As a trial and appellate lawyer, Lin helps journalists investigate stories, keep their notes and sources private, and protect themselves against retaliation over their published work and newsgathering. For four years, from 2021 to 2025, Lin also directed the University of Virginia School of Law First Amendment Clinic.

Prior to joining the Reporters Committee, Lin worked in the intellectual property litigation group of Holland & Knight LLP in New York. He holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law and B.A. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is admitted to practice in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Oklahoma, as well as the U.S. District Courts for S.D.N.Y., E.D.N.Y., D.D.C., and E.D. Va., the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Seventh Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lin’s litigation and subpoena defense clients have included large media companies like the Associated Press, NPR, C-Span, Gannett, Forbes, and Business Insider, nonprofit investigative newsrooms like ProPublica, The Intercept, and the Invisible Institute, and regional news organizations like Virginia Public Media, NonDoc Media (Oklahoma), the Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee), the Gazette (Colorado), the Erie Reader (Pennsylvania), the Astorian (Oregon), and the Indiana Capital Chronicle. He has also represented journalists in connection with work published in outlets including Playboy, D Magazine, Inside Climate News, Vice, and the Navy Times.

In addition to his in-court work, Lin helps reporters and documentarians assess and manage risk from publishing stories about high-profile or litigious subjects. His film clients have included two productions shortlisted for a Best Documentary Feature Film Oscar, "Union" and "Procession," and several others that have received wide distribution, including "Almost American," "Bulletproof," and "The People vs. Agent Orange." Other pre-publication clients have included reporters working on stories placed in outlets such as The Atlantic, InvestigateWest, Investigate Midwest, Earth Island Journal, San Francisco Public Press, San Francisco Bay View, and The New Humanitarian.

Lin has also authored more than 20 amicus briefs for coalitions of news and transparency organizations, informing appellate courts of the coalitions’ position in defamation, civil rights, public records, court access and unsealing, and reporters privilege cases.

In addition, while past outcomes do not predict future results, the matters listed below illustrate some of the impact achieved by and for Lin’s clients:

  • Leo Investments v. Tomales Bay Capital (Delaware Chancery Court). Two challenges to the parties’ failure to publicly file court documents were granted in part. The information disclosed was used by ProPublica to report that SpaceX raised money directly from Chinese investors, shedding light on questions raised by members of two congressional committees. (Third challenge pending.)
  • Suri v. Trump, et al. (U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit). A motion to remove a restriction preventing the public from viewing filings in the case on PACER was quickly granted, supporting the reporting of The Intercept (and all interested news outlets) about the Department of Homeland Security’s arrest and detention of a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University.
  • Chattanooga Times Free Press v. Chattanooga, et al. (Tennessee Chancery Court, Hamilton County). An injunction against a City Council’s method of avoiding public observation of its redistricting process was granted at summary judgment, ensuring the newspaper’s ability to observe meetings of its city government. (Appeal pending.)
  • Insider, Inc. adv. Virginia Department of Corrections. An agreement reached with an agency to produce hundreds of reports of patrol dogs biting prisoners in its facilities supported Business Insider’s investigative series about the use of attack-trained dogs in corrections facilities. The reporting led to a new law limiting the practice in Virginia, and Business Insider’s reporter was awarded the Hillman Prize for Newspaper Journalism for her work. (Litigation over follow-up request pending.)
  • United States v. Burkov (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia). A motion to unseal court records reflecting the federal government’s use of a 1789 law to compel travel companies to monitor suspects locations was resolved successfully. The unsealed records informed Forbes’ reporting on how and why the government repeatedly, secretly used that method of compelled disclosure.
  • In re Motion to Quash Subpoena to Non-Party Journalist Carl Prine (U.S. District Courts for the Southern District of Indiana and District of Columbia). A motion to quash a subpoena served on a journalist was resolved through the proffer of a one-sentence declaration. The journalist avoided a deposition that sought the sources of and information about his reporting and editing of stories involving a whistleblower’s allegations of racism and retaliatory conduct by U.S. Navy officials.
  • An investigative report vetted by Reporters Committee attorneys and co-published by The Atlantic and InvestigateWest led to congressional action pushing the Department of Energy to publish a study it had conducted about the benefits of modernizing the energy grid. After DOE released the study, follow-up reporting revealed a pattern at that agency of burying favorable research on renewable energy and further congressional investigation.
  • Jha v. Khan (Washington Court of Appeals). An amicus brief written on behalf of a news coalition was favorably cited and discussed by the court tasked with issuing the first ever appellate interpretation of an anti-SLAPP statute patterned on the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA).

Email: lweeks [at] rcfp [dot] org

Admitted to practice in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Oklahoma, as well as the U.S. District Courts for S.D.N.Y., E.D.N.Y., D.D.C., and E.D. Va., the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and Seventh Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court.