ACLU to Federal Appeals Court: White House Retaliation Against Disfavored Reporters Puts U.S. in Dangerous Company

Warning that retaliation against the press is a tactic that “belongs to a society much different and more oppressive than our own,” the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of the District of Columbia filed a brief late last night in support of the Associated Press in their lawsuit against the Trump administration.

The brief supports the AP’s claim that the White House violated the First Amendment when it restricted the AP’s access to official events because the outlet refused to adopt the administration’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico. The brief argues that incursions on free expression, left unchecked, frequently lead to greater repression, as demonstrated by American history and the modern experience of other nations, and the brief catalogues the Trump administration’s alarming campaign of retaliation against dissenting voices.

“Attacking a free press is a key play in the autocracy playbook, as we have seen around the world in recent years,” said Scott Michelman, legal director at the ACLU of D.C. “When countries like Hungary and the Philippines have regressed from democracy toward autocracy, the punishment of journalists critical of the ruling party has been a harbinger of worse to come. By punishing the AP for refusing to parrot the administration’s worldview, Trump is taking a step down a dangerous road. The First Amendment exists to block any incursion against press freedom, and we are asking the court to heed the lessons of our own history and of world history by enforcing the First Amendment here.”

In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aiming to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America.” When the Associated Press chose not to use the new moniker, the White House retaliated by barring the AP’s reporters from participating in the press pool in the Oval Office or aboard Air Force One. The news organization filed suit in February and was granted reinstatement by a federal judge in April. Part of the judge’s decision was temporarily stayed by a panel of the D.C. Circuit.

“The president cannot punish a press outlet for its choice of words,” said Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “The White House press pool guarantees the public’s timely access to important information about the president and the executive branch. If the president can banish any media outlet that refuses to parrot the administration’s talking points, the American public will hear exclusively from sycophants and stenographers.”

Participation in the White House press pool is historically managed by the White House Correspondents Association, and the president has not in recent history had the power to remove individual outlets based on the content of their coverage.

The AP’s suit, Associated Press v. Budowich, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It is currently before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where the ACLU and the ACLU of D.C. filed the amicus late Monday.

Related Documents

• AP v. Budowich Amicus Brief