The outlets said the ban violated the US constitution's first amendment protections for freedom of speech and a free press as well as their rights to due process.
US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, held the hearing in Washington DC to consider a request by CNN, MS NOW and Politico for a temporary restraining order that would immediately reinstate their White House access while a legal challenge they filed on Monday plays out.
The judge did not make an immediate ruling.
Kelly said that two precedents from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit make clear that journalists are entitled to due process before their White House press passes can be revoked.
The judge added that it did not appear that the White House had given the three news outlets a meaningful opportunity to contest the revocation of their access.
"The government said those cases ... were wrongly decided," Kelly said.
"Maybe they were wrongly decided, maybe they weren't. But as a district court judge I have to apply them. I think it is fair to say the process the circuit laid out in those two cases wasn't followed here."
A lawyer for the news outlets told Kelly that they were banned without legally required advance notice or opportunity to contest the decisions.
"By ejecting and banning the plaintiffs from the White House without a semblance of due process here, defendants have imposed what really amounts to an unprecedented, unreasonable and severe punishment," lawyer Theodore Boutrous said.
Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer, told the judge Trump's administration provided a sufficient explanation for the revocation of the press passes in letters sent to the news outlets on Tuesday.
But the judge signalled scepticism of that argument, noting that the letters were sent after the revocation occurred and the lawsuit was filed.
"I don't know how a letter that they got after the pass was revoked could provide them with the notice of the kind of standards that they would have to conform their conduct to, since it's a piece of paper they got saying, 'You've already violated this.'"
In a legal filing on the eve of the hearing, the Justice Department argued that access to the White House is a privilege not an entitlement, and that the president had the authority to suspend access by news organisations.
The department also echoed Trump's contention that the bans are justified by national security concerns regarding news coverage by the outlets.
The news outlets have accused Trump of unlawful discrimination against them based on their viewpoints.
"The viewpoint discrimination is probably the clearest case in history. I mean, the president said, 'I don't like what you're publishing. I'm taking away your press pass based on that,'" Boutrous told the hearing.
"They are using national security as this talisman - these magic words," Boutrous said.
"It is just a pretextual, post hoc effort to justify just a blatant violation of due process."
Trump announced the ban on Friday on his social media platform, saying those news outlets "shouldn't be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they're covering the President of the United States."
The government on Tuesday said it sent letters to the outlets after the ban that accused them of endangering national security with their reporting, citing stories about US missile stockpiles, construction of Trump's White House ballroom and turnout at the Republican party's recent midterm convention.
