The attorneys general of 34 U.S. states and the District of Columbia filed briefs Friday with the Supreme Court of the United States in support of two embattled reporters.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

The brief urged the court to hear the reporters' case and argued that the absence of federal protection for journalists and their sources undermines the laws of the 49 states that do offer protection.

State court judges considering subpoenas for reporters' sources usually balance two competing interests, the importance of the information and the damage that disclosure may do to the flow of information to the public.

The brief took no position on whether Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the federal special prosecutor pursuing the two reporters' testimony, would win or lose under such a standard. But it said the Supreme Court should take the case to establish similar federal protection.

That would close a gap, the brief argued. At present, reporters receive widely varying protection depending on whether their testimony about a given interview is sought in state or federal court. As a consequence, the brief said, reporters and sources cannot make agreements in the confidence that state laws will protect them.

"In the absence of some kind of federal privilege, our laws could become meaningless," Attorney General W.A. Drew Edmondson, an Oklahoma Democrat and the lead lawyer for the group, said in an interview.

For background, Judith Miller of the NYT and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine are facing contempt of court charges for refusing to identify their sources in the case of Valerie Plame, an active CIA agent who was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

What makes this situation especially bizarre is that Miller never even published a story and Novak was never charged!

Here's a further excerpt:

In February, the federal appeals court in Washington upheld a trial judge's decision holding the two reporters in contempt and ordering them jailed, but the appeals court panel split three ways on the question of whether federal law recognizes a reporters' privilege. A 1972 decision of the Supreme Court, Branzburg v. Hayes, held that the First Amendment does not supply such protection.

But a rule of evidence adopted by Congress in 1975 authorizes federal courts to recognize new privileges in light of "reason and experience." In the brief filed today, the state attorneys general argued that the breadth and consistency of state protections, many of them relatively recent, satisfies that requirement.

The Supreme Court may decide whether to hear the case before it takes its summer recess. Should it do so, it would probably hear arguments in its next term, which begins in October.