Washington, D.C. ? A judge is trying to bankrupt an ex-reporter with daily fines as much as $5,000 for refusing to disclose her sources for stories about the 2001 anthrax attacks, press advocates said Saturday.

They also said the case involving Toni Locy shows why Congress should pass a federal shield law for reporters.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Friday denied a request from Locy to stay payment of fines for a contempt citation pending an appeal and ruled she must “personally bear the responsibility of paying the fine the court imposed.”

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, said Walton appears to be trying to bankrupt Locy, a former Associated Press reporter who now is a professor at West Virginia University’s journalism school.