A White House correspondent is suing to block the White House’s new press credentialing requirement after he was denied a “hard pass.” The hard pass is “a special form of press credentials that allows unlimited access to the White House press facilities.”
The White House Correspondents’ Association notes that “[a] hard pass is critical for anyone who reports regularly on the White House.”
The Center for American Liberty (CAL) filed the complaint on behalf of Today News Africa‘s White House correspondent Simon Ateba, who has failed to qualify under the new hard pass requirement.
The revised requirement restricts the hard pass to White House correspondents who have “[a]ccreditation by a press gallery in either the Supreme Court, U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives.”
Ateba has not met the revised requirement because the Supreme Court typically limits credentials to full-time Supreme Court reporters, which Ateba is not, and the Congressional Press Gallery has not replied to his request for accreditation, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges the White House Press Office routinely ignores Ateba’s written questions, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refuses to call on Ateba during press briefings, and the Press Office denies Ateba access to President Biden’s press conferences.
Dissatisfied with his lack of access, Ateba took to “speaking up during press briefings” by “asserted himself in the briefing room, speaking over other reporters and the White House Press Secretary in an attempt to make his concerns known,” as he did at a press briefing on March 20, 2023.
Shortly before the revised requirement took effect, Ateba received a letter warning him his conduct violated the Press Office’s decorum policy, which is not the subject of the lawsuit.
“The White House can, and has, adopted a decorum policy for the briefing room,” CAL associate counsel Eric Sell told Legal Insurrection. “We are not challenging this decorum policy, nor are we arguing the White House can’t enforce it.”
“Instead, we are challenging the new criteria all journalists must satisfy to qualify for a hard pass,” Sell continued. “We are also challenging the changes to the hard pass criteria for targeting Simon specifically.”
The complaint accuses the White House of revising the credentialing requirement “in a brazen attempt to exclude Mr. Ateba from the White House briefing room.” The changes came “because the White House no longer wanted deal with him or his questions,” according to the complaint.
“Mr. Ateba’s questions often relate to issues other White House correspondents do not cover. . . . Mr. Ateba covers topics affecting millions of people around the world—and many of his colleagues have little interest in asking the questions to which Mr. Ateba wants answers,” which focus on United States–Africa relations.
“The mainstream media coverage of these incidents,” according to the complaint, “has largely painted Mr. Ateba as disruptive, disrespectful, and even seeking attention for himself. But Mr. Ateba is simply seeking answers to his questions, which the White House refuses to give.”
“It is common for White House correspondents to raise their voices and even shout over each other during press briefings,” the complaint argues.
The complaint alleges First and Fifth Amendment violations because the revised hard pass requirement impermissibly and vaguely delegates accreditation authority to the Congressional Press Gallery in a manner “giv[ing] the government unbridled discretion to permit the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
The discretion is “unbridled” because the Congressional Press Gallery “only approv[es] credentials for journalists they deem are ‘reputable.’ The failure to adopt and apply purely objective standards for congressional press credentials renders the credentialing process unconstitutional.”
The complaint also alleges viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment:
Defendants violated Mr. Ateba’s First Amendment rights by changing the criteria for hard pass credentials to intentionally prevent Mr. Ateba from obtaining hard pass access. Defendants did so by adopting credentialing criteria specifically designed to exclude Mr. Ateba from eligibility. Such discrimination amounts to a content-based regulation and viewpoint discrimination against Mr. Ateba in violation of the First Amendment.
The final claim alleges the Secret Service violated the APA by terminating Ateba’s hard pass without any stated justification. “[T]he Secret Service has acted arbitrarily and capriciously in cancelling Mr. Ateba’s hard pass, in violation of” the APA.
The complaint names three defendants: Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the United States Secret Service, and Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle.
As press secretary, “Jean-Pierre is in charge of the White House Press Office, the organization responsible for credentialing reporters for the White House press facilities.” The Secret Service “is the agency ultimately responsible for issuing the hard pass.
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