By Jack Queen
(Reuters) -President Donald Trump is free to bar the Associated Press from some White House media events for now, after a U.S. appeals court on Friday paused a lower court ruling mandating that AP journalists be given access.
The divided ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit temporarily blocks an order by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who ruled on April 8 that the Trump administration must allow AP journalists access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and White House events while the news agency’s lawsuit moves forward.
The 2-1 ruling was written by U.S. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, joined by fellow Trump appointee U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas.
Rao wrote that the lower court injunction “impinges on the President’s independence and control over his private workspaces” and that the White House was likely to ultimately defeat the Associated Press’ lawsuit.
The White House and a lawyer for the Associated Press did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a dissent, Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said her two colleagues’ ruling cannot be squared with “any sensible understanding of the role of a free press in our constitutional democracy.”
The AP sued in February after the White House restricted the news outlet’s access over its decision to continue referring to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage despite Trump renaming the body of water the Gulf of America.
The AP’s lawyers argued the new policy violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects free speech rights.
McFadden, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, said in his ruling that if the White House opens its doors to some journalists it cannot exclude others based on their viewpoints.
Trump administration lawyers said the president has absolute discretion over media access to the White House and that McFadden’s ruling infringed on his ability to decide whom to admit to sensitive spaces.
“The Constitution does not prohibit the President from considering a journalist’s prior coverage in evaluating how much access he will grant that journalist,” lawyers for the administration said in a court filing.
On April 16, the AP accused the Trump administration of defying the court order by continuing to exclude its journalists from some events and then limiting access to Trump for all news wires, including Reuters and Bloomberg.
Reuters and the AP both issued statements denouncing the new policy, which puts wire services in a larger rotation with about 30 other newspaper and print outlets.
Other media customers, including local news organizations that have no presence in Washington, rely on the wire services’ real-time reports of presidential statements as do global financial markets.
The AP says in its stylebook that the Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years and, as a global news agency, the AP will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Mike Scarcella in Washington; Editing by Amy Stevens, Bill Berkrot and David Gregorio)
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