Copyright The Daily Beast
A federal judge has ordered the White House to reinstall sign language interpreters at press briefings to avoid “imminent harm” to deaf Americans being denied vital information. The Trump administration axed ASL interpreters in January. Their job is to translate speeches in real time, including those by President Trump and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, to make them accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) filed a federal lawsuit in May asking a court to require that ASL interpreters be permitted to attend White House briefings. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who was appointed by Biden, ruled on Tuesday that refusing ASL interpreters was discrimination and excluded deaf Americans from updates on matters that impact them including the economy, public health and 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 said. The ruling also said having no real time ASL interpreter in the White House for press briefings “likely violated” the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability, including deafness. The judge also shut down a curious claim by the Trump’s team that requiring translators at presidential press briefings would be a “major incursion” on the administration’s prerogatives. Ali said that disliking the “image” of interpreters standing next to Trump is not sufficient to ignore the Rehabilitation Act. “ASL interpretation does not require a speaker to ‘share his platform’ with anyone,” Ali said. “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.” The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and NAD for comment. During his election campaign in 2024, Trump promised Americans that “all of the forgotten men and women who have been neglected, abandoned, and left behind, you will be forgotten no longer.” The ditching of ASL interpreters in January was part of the Trump administration’s war on disability. That included dismantling DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility) efforts designed to protect disabled people, and removing the federal government’s ability to enforce disability civil rights laws. During Trump’s first administration in 2020, NAD also filed a lawsuit to allow ASL interpreters access to news briefings, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lawsuit was voluntarily settled after Joe Biden became president, with his administration releasing a “Communication Services for People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing at Presidential Briefings” policy that implemented accessibility services. That saw ASL interpreters used at all public briefings related to the president. They were also visible on the White House’s official social media channels, making them fully accessible. Trump ended the practice in January 2025. “Deaf and hard of hearing Americans have the right to the same access to White House information as everyone else. Denying them ASL interpreters is a direct violation of that right, and the NAD will continue to fight for their full inclusion in the democratic process,” Dr. Bobbie Beth Scoggins, Interim Chief Executive Officer of the NAD said in May.
