WASHINGTON—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today filed an amicus brief in a case brought by the Associated Press (AP) challenging the Trump administration’s decision to exclude its reporters from White House press briefings. Four days after the AP filed its lawsuit, the White House announced that it—rather than the independent White House Correspondents Association—would determine which outlets could participate in the press pool and that AP would remain barred based on its editorial decisions. The ban is an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech, the Knight Institute argues.

“The First Amendment bars the White House from excluding news organizations from the press pool based on their editorial judgments,” said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director. “The court should reinstate AP and categorically reject the administration’s unconstitutional effort to control the news.”

The Knight Institute’s brief argues that the press pool is an expressive forum from which the government can’t constitutionally exclude news organizations based on their viewpoints. The Institute made a similar argument during President Trump’s first term in challenging Trump’s practice of blocking critics from his social media accounts. The courts sided with the Institute in that case, holding that Trump had violated the First Amendment and forcing him to restore the critics he’d excluded. More about that case here.

“The White House’s moves to ban the AP from the press pool based on its editorial decisions is part of this president’s broader attack on the press and free speech, as it attempts to bully media organizations into coverage that only benefits the president,” said Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight Institute. “Public discourse and self-governance stand to lose the most from these attacks, because the public relies on the press for timely and unbiased information about the president and his policies.”

Read today’s amicus brief here. 

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Jaffer, Katie Fallow, Alex Abdo, and Eric Columbus for the Knight First Amendment Institute.

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected]