A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump’s White House to restore the Associated Press’s media access.
The White House took away the outlet’s presidential pool privileges after the AP did not change its stylebook guidelines to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America in media coverage, defying Trump’s executive order that renamed the body of water.
On Tuesday, after the AP sued the Trump administration earlier this year, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Trevor McFadden granted a preliminary injunction which ordered that the administration resume the wire service’s access to spaces limited to approved press pool, such as the Oval Office and Air Force One.
“This injunction does not limit the various permissible reasons the Government may have for excluding journalists from limited-access events,” McFadden wrote in his decision. “It does not mandate that all eligible journalists, or indeed any journalists at all, be given access to the President or nonpublic government spaces. It does not prohibit government officials from freely choosing which journalists to sit down with for interviews or which ones’ questions they answer. And it certainly does not prevent senior officials from publicly expressing their own views.”
“No, 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,” he continued. “The Constitution requires no less.”
Trump nominated McFadden to the bench in 2017.
AP reporters have been blocked from numerous White House events, including conferences and executive order signings, over the past weeks because of their continued refusal to adopt Trump’s new name for the Gulf of Mexico. White House Deputy Chief of Staff said in February that “while their right to irresponsible and dishonest reporting is protected by the First Amendment, it does not ensure their privilege of unfettered access to limited space.”