Washington — On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled in favor of the Associated Press in its ongoing legal dispute with the White House, ordering top officials to restore the news outlet’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other spaces and events open to White House reporters.
In a 41-page decision, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden granted the Associated Press a preliminary injunction prohibiting the federal government from denying it access to certain media events because of its decision to continue using the name Gulf of Mexico.
On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order to rename 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,” according to McFadden.
“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, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump, stated that his injunction does not limit the government’s “various permissible reasons” for excluding journalists from events with limited access, nor does it require that all eligible reporters be granted access to the president or private government spaces.
He clarified that his decision does not prevent government officials from selecting which journalists to interview or from publicly expressing their own opinions.
“The court simply holds that under the First Amendment, if the government opens its doors to some journalists — whether in the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then close those doors to other journalists based on their viewpoints.” “The Constitution requires nothing less,” McFadden wrote in his opinion.
McFadden put his decision on hold until April 13 to give the government time to seek emergency relief from a higher court and prepare to carry out the injunction.
McFadden discovered that AP reporters have been “systematically banned” from White House events that the general press corps has been able to attend since February 13, resulting in a “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 present when news breaks, they are unlikely to be among the first to report it.
Instead, they are forced to wait and gather whatever scraps of verifiable information they can find while 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 when Mr. Trump announced that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America.
Following that decision, the Associated Press declined to update its influential Stylebook, which is used in many newsrooms around the world, to reflect the name change.
According to the Associated Press, Mr. Trump’s order renaming the Gulf of Mexico only applies to the United States, and other countries are not required to recognize the change. It stated that as an international news organization, “the AP must ensure that places, names, and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
The Associated Press, a news wire service, is a regular contributor to the White House press pool, which is a group of rotating reporters, videographers, and photographers who cover the president daily and accompany him when he leaves the White House grounds.
Local newspapers increasingly rely on the Associated Press and other syndicated news outlets due to their broad coverage.
According to the wire service, an estimated 4 billion people read the AP every day, and journalists report from nearly 100 countries.
According to court filings, after the Associated Press stated that it would continue to use 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 permitted to enter the Oval Office as part of the press pool until the AP changed its Stylebook to use Gulf of America.
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 pool-covered gatherings where Mr. Trump was speaking, according to the outlet.
According to filings, AP reporters who have credentials, known as a “hard pass,” that allow general access to White House facilities have also been denied access to events such as Mr. Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the president’s meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda at a Maryland convention center.
However, the Associated Press has argued that its access has been limited beyond events covered by the press pool to those covered by the entire White House press corps.
The news outlet sued White House officials in late February, and the court initially denied the AP’s request for a temporary restraining order. However, following a hearing last month for a longer preliminary injunction, McFadden granted the 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,” said the judge.
McFadden determined that, while the AP does not have a constitutional right to enter the Oval Office, it does have the right not to be excluded because of its viewpoint.
“According to the Associated Press, this is exactly what is happening. “The court agrees,” he explained. “Indeed, the government has been outright about this. Several high-ranking officials have repeatedly stated that they are limiting the AP’s access solely because of the organization’s viewpoint.”
While the White House claims that the AP has 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 in its claim that White House officials are impermissibly excluding it from limited-access events, such as those held in the East Room of the White House and off its grounds.
“The Associated Press made an editorial decision to continue using ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in its Stylebook.
The government publicly expressed its displeasure and explicitly stated that it was restricting 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 claimed that having its access restricted has “poisoned the AP’s business model,” reducing its ability to disseminate photographs and breaking news.
He stated that the AP cannot be treated worse than its peer wire services. The court simply declares that the AP’s exclusion violated the First Amendment, and it prohibits 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 raised after the president was shot in the ear in Pennsylvania last July, testified in favor of restoring his access.
“It kills us,” Vucci said, claiming that the outlet’s photographers represent the “gold standard” of photojournalism.
In the initial arguments in the case, an attorney for the Trump administration argued that the “content of a journalist’s speech” can be considered in determining whether or not to grant access, and that Mr. Trump has the authority to deny access to any media he wishes.
“There is no right to have special access to the Oval Office,” the lawyer stated.
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 decision to ban the outlet from covering Mr. Trump as part of the White House press pool was not about cutting it off entirely from access to the White House, but rather “losing special media access to the president — a quintessentially discretionary presidential choice that infringes no constitutional