A federal judge on Monday denied a request by the Associated Press to immediately restore full access to presidential events for the news agency’s journalists.
The US district judge Trevor McFadden declined to grant the AP’s request for a temporary injunction restoring its access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House. The Trump administration barred the outlet earlier this month for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage after the president renamed it the “Gulf of America”.
McFadden, a Trump appointee, said the restriction on “more private areas” used by Trump was different from prior instances in which courts have blocked government officials from revoking access to journalists.
“I can’t say the AP has shown a likelihood of success here,” McFadden said.
But he also described the ban as “problematic” and advised the government that “case law in this circuit is uniformly unhelpful to the White House”. McFadden said the issue required more exploration before ruling. Another hearing in the case has been set for next month.
The AP filed a lawsuit over the ban last week, in which it named three senior Trump aides and argued that the decision to block its reporters from certain locations violates the US constitution’s first amendment protections against government abridgment of speech by trying to dictate the language they use in reporting the news.
“The constitution prevents the president of the United States or any other government official from coercing journalists or anyone else into using official government vocabulary to report the news,” Charles Tobin, a lawyer for the AP, said during a court hearing.
The outlet’s attorneys argued the AP would face “irreparable harm” if the ban was not immediately lifted.
Trump administration lawyers argued in a court filing before the hearing that the AP does not have a constitutional right to what they called “special media access to the president”.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had called the AP lawsuit a “blatant PR stunt” while Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said: “We feel we are in the right in this position.”
Leavitt is one of the three White House officials named as defendants in the lawsuit. The other two, Susan Wiles, the chief of staff, and Taylor Budowich, the deputy chief of staff, have not responded to requests for comment.
Trump signed an executive order last month directing the US interior department to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The AP said in January it would continue to use the gulf’s long-established name in stories while also acknowledging Trump’s efforts to change it.
The White House banned AP reporters in response, preventing the AP’s journalists from seeing and hearing Trump and other top White House officials as they take newsworthy actions or respond in real time to news events.
“We’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America,” Trump said last week.
The White House Correspondents’ Association said in a legal brief backing the AP in the case that the ban “will chill and distort news coverage of the president to the public’s detriment”.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report
