A federal judge ruled that the White House must restore real-time American Sign Language interpretation to all press briefings held by President Donald Trump or press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington said the decision to end the interpretation illegally excluded deaf Americans from important updates on issues like the economy, public health, and matters of war.
“Given the nature of the programming at issue here — regularly scheduled briefings on critical topics implicating markets, medicine, militaries, and myriads of other issues — the court finds that denying deaf Americans access to and the benefit of it presents a clear, present, and imminent harm,” Ali wrote.
Ali, who was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden, required the ASL interpretation returned to the briefings.
The National Association for the Deaf had filed suit, arguing the Trump administration was in violation of the Rehabilitation Act, which banned the government from excluding people with disabilities from government programming and communication.
The judge did not mandate ASL interpretation for briefings involving the vice president, first lady, second lady, or for White House videos.
Ali pushed back on arguments from the Trump administration that an interpreter would be a “major incursion” on the briefings.
“ASL interpretation does not require a speaker to ‘share his platform’ with anyone,” Ali wrote in his ruling.
“The evidence shows, and the court finds, that the defendants can readily implement remote ASL interpretation without an interpreter present in the same room as the speaker.”
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