Lawyers argue for journalist's sources

"She would have to turn to her family, her friends, or to others" to pay the fines, "but the order forbids her to do so," said the court filing.

The lawyers said Walton failed to apply the law. Federal courts in Washington recognize a qualified First Amendment privilege enabling reporters to protect their sources in civil cases.

Locy has been pulled into a lawsuit against the government by scientist Steven Hatfill, who came under scrutiny in the anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 others. The anthrax mailings to Capitol Hill lawmakers and members of the media were made shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Thirty-one news organizations, including the Associated Press, supported Locy in a separate filing in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Locy worked for the AP after she left USA Today. She previously worked for The Boston Globe.

Privacy Act claims like the ones Hatfill filed should not be "transformed into all-purpose antileak remedies wielded against government speech with reporters as collateral damage," stated the news organizations' brief.

Walton is demanding that Locy provide the names of the dozen Justice Department and FBI sources who provided her information on the anthrax attacks.

She says she cannot recall which of her sources supplied information for two stories she wrote about Hatfill in May and June 2003.

Locy's stories said investigators were questioning whether they had focused on the wrong person, that evidence against Hatfill was largely circumstantial, that Hatfill's answers to questions were evasive, and that an FBI search of a pond near Hatfill's house did not lead to any evidence tying him to the attacks.