USA Today and its parent company, Gannett Publishing, is fighting a subpoena for information on people who accessed a story on the newspaper’s website about a Florida shooting in February that left two FBI agents dead, Politico reports.

The subpoena, signed by an FBI agent located in Maryland, demands USA Today hand over the IP addresses and phone numbers of the people who read the story about the murder of two FBI agents who were part of a raid on the apartment of David Lee Huber, 55, who was suspected of distributing child pornography.  The subpoena seeks information on people who accessed the story during a 35-minute window starting just after 8 p.m. on the day of the shootings.

According to the subpoena, the FBI is seeking the information because it “relates to a federal criminal investigation being conducted by the FBI.”  The nature of the specific investigation is not mentioned. 

Lawyers for USA Today are fighting the subpoena, citing cases that struck down the ability of the government to get information about what people checked out books at a library or what books customers bought at a bookstore.  One of the cases involves a subpoena issued by Ken Starr seeking information on books purchased by Monica Lewinsky at a Washington, DC-area bookstore during the Bill Clinton administration; a judge challenged that demand, saying it infringed on Lewinsky’s First Amendment rights.

“A government demand for records that would identify specific individuals who read specific expressive materials, like the Subpoena at issue here, invades the First Amendment rights of both publisher and reader, and must be quashed accordingly,” attorneys Charles Tobin and Maxwell Mishkin wrote on behalf of Gannett.