White House Must Provide ASL Interpreter for Briefings (1)

A federal judge has spurned President Donald Trump’s move to get rid of American Sign Language interpreters for certain White House briefings.

Judge Amir H. Ali, of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, granted in part a preliminary injunction motion from the National Association of the Deaf. A publicly accessible ASL interpreter must be provided for White House media briefings held by the president or Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the judge said, but he rejected similar relief for events conducted by Vice President JD Vance or First Lady Melania Trump.

“White House press briefings engage the American people on important issues affecting their daily lives—in recent months, war, the economy, and healthcare, and, in recent years, a global pandemic,” Ali said. “The exclusion of deaf Americans from that programming, in addition to likely violating the Rehabilitation Act, is clear and present harm that the court cannot meaningfully remedy after the fact.”

Ali said that the plaintiffs, who include Derrick Ford, a deaf man, are entitled to preliminary relief because the record shows exclusion is a reality for Ford, NAD members, and many other deaf Americans, and that providing ASL interpretation is “readily feasible.”

In 2020, NAD and several individuals sued to require ASL interpretation for COVID-19 press briefings, resulting in a preliminary injunction that required it. That case settled after the Biden White House adopted a broader policy of providing ASL interpretation during press briefings conducted by the president, vice president, first lady, second gentleman, or White House press secretary.

But the White House stopped providing ASL interpretation during press briefings when Trump assumed power again in January.

NAD sued Trump in May, alleging removal of ASL interpreters that had previously been provided during the Biden administration violated deaf Americans’ First and Fifth Amendment rights by denying access to real-time information from White House broadcasts. The nonprofit also alleged disability discrimination in violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their Rehabilitation Act claim, said Ali, who added that he agrees with courts that have concluded the law’s prohibition of discrimination in government programming is enforceable “under the statute itself,” and through a court’s “inherent equitable power to enjoin the Government.”

The Rehabilitation Act claim isn’t barred by the settlement agreement in the related case, Ali ruled. This is in part because it isn’t prevented by the doctrine of claim preclusion, which applies if there has been prior litigation involving the same claims or cause of action.

“The plaintiffs’ claim here cannot be said to be the same as in the prior suit—or, as courts have put it, to ‘share the same nucleus of facts’ as that case,” Ali said, “because they are challenging their exclusion from, and denial of the benefits of, press briefings that had not even occurred at the time of the prior suit.”

The government also failed to satisfy other critical elements of claim preclusion, Ali noted.

But, the relief proposed by the plaintiffs was “overbroad,” said Ali, in large part because their argument and evidence focus almost exclusively “on the importance of, and corresponding harm that would result from exclusion from,” Trump’s and Leavitt’s briefings.

The plaintiffs didn’t introduce evidence that supports extending the court’s relief to other press conferences or related events, or to events conducted exclusively by Vance, Melania Trump, or Second Lady Usha Vance.

Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer and National Association of the Deaf in-house attorneys represent the plaintiffs.

The case is Nat’l Assoc. of the Deaf v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 1:25-cv-01683, 11/4/25.