Washington — A federal judge on Tuesday ruled for the Associated Press in its ongoing legal dispute with the White House and ordered top officials to restore the news outlet’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and other spaces and events when they are open to White House reporters.
In a 41-page decision, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden granted the AP a preliminary injunction blocking the federal government from restricting its access to certain media events because of its decision to continue using the name Gulf of Mexico. President Trump on his first day in office issued an executive order renaming the body of water the Gulf of America.
“The AP seeks restored eligibility for admission to the press pool and limited-access press events, untainted by an impermissible viewpoint-based exclusion,” McFadden wrote. “That is all the court orders today: For the government to put the AP on an equal playing field as similarly situated outlets, despite the AP’s use of disfavored terminology.”
McFadden, appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump, said his injunction doesn’t limit the “various permissible reasons” the government may have from excluding journalists from events where access is limited or mandate that all eligible reporters be given access to the president or private government spaces.
He clarified that his decision also does not bar government officials from choosing which journalists to participate in interviews with or from publicly expressing their own views.
“The court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less,” McFadden wrote in his opinion.
McFadden put his decision on hold through April 13 to allow the government time to seek emergency relief from a higher court and prepare to implement the injunction.
McFadden found that AP reporters have been “systematically banned” from White House events that the broader press corps has been able to attend since Feb. 13, resulting in an “erosion of quality and capability” of the news outlet’s reporting, and leaving the agency with a product that is “a shadow of its former self.”
“To state the obvious, if the AP’s wire reporters are not in the room when news happens, they can hardly be the first to break the news. Instead, they are forced to wait and pick up whatever scraps of verifiable information they can find as they watch their competitors break the story first,” McFadden wrote, adding that AP reporters “cannot ask questions from outside a closed door.”
The dispute between the AP and the White House began after Mr. Trump declared that the name for the Gulf of Mexico would be changed to the Gulf of America. In the wake of that decision, the AP declined to update its influential Stylebook — used in many newsrooms worldwide — to reflect the name-change.
The AP said in an announcement on Jan. 23 that Mr. Trump’s order renaming the Gulf of Mexico only carries authority within the United States, and other countries did not have to recognize the change. It said that as an international news agency, “the AP must ensure that places, names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
The AP, a news wire service, is a regular outlet in the White House press pool, which is a group of rotating reporters, videographers and photographers who cover the president daily and travel with him when he leaves the White House grounds. Because of the broad reach of the AP’s coverage, local newspapers increasingly rely on it and other syndicated news outlets.
An estimated 4 billion people read the AP daily, the wire service estimates, and it has journalists reporting in nearly 100 countries.
After the AP said it would continue using the name Gulf of Mexico, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt informed its chief White House correspondent on February 11 that the outlet would no longer be allowed in the Oval Office as part of the press pool until the AP changed its Stylebook to use Gulf of America, according to court filings.
AP reporters were then barred from attending press pool events at the White House, including executive order signings in the Oval Office and a press conference, as well as other gatherings covered by the pool in places where Mr. Trump was speaking, the outlet said.
Reporters with the AP who have credentials, known as a “hard pass,” that allow general access to White House facilities have also been denied access to events including Mr. Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as the president’s meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda at a convention center in Maryland, according to filings.
But the AP has argued that its access has been restricted beyond those events covered by the press pool to include those covered by the wider White House press corps.
The news outlet filed its lawsuit against White House officials in late February, and the court initially denied the AP’s request for a temporary restraining order. But following a hearing last month for a longer preliminary injunction, McFadden granted that relief.
“The court concludes that the AP is likely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment viewpoint-discrimination and retaliation claims for both its press pool and East Room allegations,” the judge wrote.
McFadden found that while the AP does not have a constitutional right to enter the Oval Office, it does have a right not to be excluded based on viewpoint.
“The AP says that is exactly what is happening. The court agrees,” he said. “Indeed, the government has been brazen about this. Several high ranking officials have repeatedly said that they are restricting the AP’s access precisely because of the organization’s viewpoint.”
While the White House has said that the AP enjoys the same general media access as other hard-pass holders, McFadden wrote in his decision that “the AP indeed has been excluded from large events far more often than its peers,” and found that the wire service is likely to succeed on its claim that White House officials are impermissibly excluding it from limited-access events, like those held in the East Room of the White House and off its grounds.
“The AP made an editorial decision to continue using ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in its Stylebook. The government responded publicly with displeasure and explicitly announced it was curtailing the AP’s access to the Oval Office, press pool events, and East Room activities,” the judge wrote. “If there is a benign explanation for the government’s decision, it has not been presented here.”
McFadden said the disadvantages of having its access restricted have “poisoned the AP’s business model,” as its ability to disseminate photographs and breaking news has dwindled.
The AP, he said “cannot be treated worse than its peer wire services either. The court merely declares that the AP’s exclusion has been contrary to the First Amendment, and it enjoins the government from continuing down that unlawful path.”
During the preliminary injunction hearing last month, AP photographer Evan Vucci, who took the infamous photo of Mr. Trump with his fist in the air after the president was hit in the ear with a bullet last July in Pennsylvania, testified on the stand in support of returning his access.
“It kills us,” Vucci said, arguing that the outlet’s photographers are the “gold standard” of photojournalism.
In initial arguments in the case, an attorney for the Trump administration argued that the “content of a journalist’s speech” can be considered in whether to grant access or not and that Mr. Trump has the ability to block any media he wants from access.
“There is no right to have special access to the Oval Office,” the attorney said.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, one of three administration officials sued by the AP, argued in a court filing in support of the administration’s ban that the determination to ban the outlet from covering Mr. Trump as part of the White House press pool was not about cutting it off entirely from accessing the White House, but rather, “losing special media access to the president — a quintessentially discretionary presidential choice that infringes no constitutional right.”