The Associated Press v. Budowich

Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

Date Filed: Feb. 24, 2025

Background: On Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Following Trump’s order, The Associated Press said that it would continue using Gulf of Mexico when referring to the body of water, though the wire service noted that its widely used style guide will acknowledge the new name Trump has chosen.

White House officials informed The Associated Press on Feb. 11, 2025, that its reporters would no longer be granted access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other limited spaces that are made open to other members of the press unless the AP began using Gulf of America. Soon after, the White House began blocking the AP from attending events open to the pool and the White House press corps, including Trump’s news conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Those access restrictions are ongoing.

On Feb. 21, 2025, the AP sued three White House officials, alleging that the ban is unconstitutional.

“The White House’s indefinite denial of the AP’s access was based on the content and perceived viewpoint of the AP’s reporting and editorial decisions, and constituted impermissible retaliation against the AP based on its constitutionally protected activity in ways that would chill the speech of similarly situated reasonable individuals,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order the White House officials to rescind their denial of the AP’s access to White House locations, and to declare that their actions violated the First and Fifth Amendments.

Our Position: Ahead of a hearing on Feb. 24, 2025, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the district court to grant the AP’s requests for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction.

• For decades, the White House press pool has played an essential role in informing the public about the president and the office of the presidency.

• Excluding the AP from access to White House events on the express basis of its editorial viewpoint violates the First Amendment.

From the Brief: “[T]he AP’s exclusion is not just arbitrary and unjustified but viewpoint-based, an ‘especially invidious’ form of discrimination often described as ‘poison’ to the free flow of information.”

Related: The Reporters Committee, joined by more than 30 news media organizations, sent a letter to the White House on Feb. 17, 2025 asking it to restore the Associated Press’s pool participation and ensure that future access to White House events is not predicated on improper considerations or disagreement with editorial choices.

Updates: During a hearing on Feb. 24, 2025, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden denied the AP’s request for an order forcing the White House to immediately restore the wire service’s access to events open to other members of the White House press corps, finding that the AP failed to establish the need for an emergency restraining order lifting the ban. However, the judge noted that the ban “seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” and suggested that the White House reconsider its decision to shut out the AP, noting that the case law “is uniformly unhelpful to the White House.” Judge McFadden set a second hearing for March 20.