A federal judge declined Monday to order the White House to restore The Associated Press’s special access to presidential news coverage, delivering the first round of the legal battle to President Trump.
Judge Trevor McFadden ordered an expedited schedule for continuing to hear the case, and the AP still has its press passes allowing its journalists access to the White House complex.
But the White House can deny the AP a reserved space to cover events in the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One.
The White House declared victory with a message on the screens in the briefing room: “Victory: Gulf of America.”
“As we have said from the beginning, asking the president of the United States questions in the Oval Office and aboard Air Force One is a privilege granted to journalists, not a legal right,” the White House said in a statement.
Mr. Trump blocked the AP from its special access after the service refused to replace “Gulf of Mexico” with “Gulf of America” in its articles. The U.S. government has officially made the change but the AP says it has an international audience it must serve.
The AP argues it is being punished for its First Amendment rights to determine its news coverage.
The White House says it hasn’t barred the AP from coverage, but is limiting the special “unfettered access” the wire service used to enjoy compared to most news organizations.
“Most journalists have no routine access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, or the President’s home at Mar-a-Lago. Presidents historically provided this special access to the Associated Press, but that discretionary choice does not create a constitutional right,” Brian P. Hudak, chief of the Justice Department’s civil division, argued in a brief to the court on Monday.
At issue is what’s known as the “press pool,” or the small group of reporters that has access to presidential events when space is limited. That includes the Oval Office and Air Force One, and certain excursions the president makes.
On Air Force One, for example, there are 13 press spaces. Three have traditionally been designated for reporters from the AP and other wire services, and five spaces go to photographers. Four slots are designated for the television and radio networks, which rotate turns.
Two other seats are designated for what was traditionally print media reporters. They write what’s known as “pool reports” that other journalists can rely on for reporting. The print pool slots are rotated among dozens of news outlets.
Similar arrangements exist for Oval Office events.
The AP has lost that special access and now must rely on the pool reports and television coverage, as well as its own sources, to learn what happened. That puts them in a tougher position than Reuters, another major wire service, but in a similar boat as The Washington Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Judge Hudak said that was enough.
“The Constitution does not require that the Associated Press receive permanent, guaranteed status in the press pool, and the Associated Press can point to no case holding that any journalist has such a sweeping liberty interest protectable under the confines of the Fifth Amendment’s procedural due process clause,” he wrote.
The White House Correspondents’ Association, the organization that helps the White House arrange the pool and allocates seats in the press briefing room, filed a brief Sunday backing the AP.
The association said it, not the White House, should control who is part of the pool.
“The government should never interfere with the operation of an independent press, nor should it demand that reporters adopt the government’s messaging, framing, and, indeed, ideological worldview. Such conduct is wholly at odds with the Constitution and cannot be permitted to persist,” said the association.
The Washington Times is a member of the association.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.