A federal appeals court ruled that the White House has the latitude to exclude any journalists it chooses from the Oval Office and other “restricted areas” — including on the basis of a news outlet’s “viewpoint.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in a 2-1 decision Friday, ruled against the AP, which had sued three Trump administration officials in February over a ban on the news organization’s access to presidential events as part of the White House press pool. The White House blocked the AP after the outlet continued referring to the body of water on the southeastern periphery of the North America as the Gulf of Mexico, after Trump decreed on Jan. 20 that henceforth it should be known as the “Gulf of America.”
The development was welcomed by President Trump. “Big WIN over AP today. They refused to state the facts or the Truth on the GULF OF AMERICA. FAKE NEWS!!!” Trump posted on his Truth Social account Friday.
The Gulf of Mexico has been known by that name since at least the late 16th century, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The appeals court issued a stay, pending appeal, on a lower court’s preliminary injunction holding that the Trump administration cannot discriminate against the AP over the Gulf of Mexico/Gulf of America issue. Under the First Amendment, Judge Trevor McFadden wrote in the April decision, “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.”
In the ruling Friday, the appeals court disagreed. “Restricted presidential spaces” such as the Oval Office and Air Force One “are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion,” Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the ruling, joined by Judge Gregory Katsas. “The White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted.” Both of the judges are Trump appointees.
“If the president sits down for an interview with [Fox News host] Laura Ingraham, he is not required to do the same with [MSNBC’s] Rachel Maddow,” Rao wrote in the opinion. “The First Amendment does not control the president’s discretion in choosing with whom to speak or to whom to provide special access.”
The two judges added that without a stay, “the government will suffer irreparable harm because the injunction impinges on the President’s independence and control over his private workspaces.”
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Cornelia Pillard of the D.C. Court of Appeals, an Obama appointee, wrote that “my colleagues assert a novel and unsupported exception to the First Amendment’s prohibition of viewpoint-based restrictions of private speech — one that not even the government itself advanced.” She said that “if the White House were privileged to exclude journalists based on viewpoint, each and every member of the White House press corps would hesitate to publish anything an incumbent administration might dislike.”
The Associated Press indicated that it will continue its legal fight in the matter. “We are disappointed in the court’s decision and are reviewing our options,” AP spokesman Patrick Maks said in a statement Friday. According to the AP’s report on the ruling, one possibility is that the news organization will seek an expedited review of the full case on its merits.
The Trump administration’s move to exclude AP from the White House press pool breaks with a long-standing tradition of the service’s participation in the rotation. The AP, founded in 1846, is one of the world’s largest news organizations, supplying content to more than 3,000 outlets across the globe. The org has said that the reason the AP Stylebook continues to refer to the Gulf of Mexico (“while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen”) is because, “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
The AP’s lawsuit names White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and press secretary Karoline Leavitt as defendants.
On Friday, Leavitt trumpeted the appeals court decision. “VICTORY!” she wrote in a post on X. “As we’ve said all along, the Associated Press is not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in other sensitive locations. Thousands of other journalists have never been afforded the opportunity to cover the President in these privileged spaces.”
Leavitt continued, “Moving forward, we will continue to expand access to new media so that more people can cover the most transparent President in American history rather than just the failing legacy media. And by the way @AP, it’s still the Gulf of America.” She ended the post with a smiley-face emoji and the U.S. flag.