Judge weighs push to require ASL interpreters at White House briefings
The case, brought by the National Association of the Deaf, alleges that, in failing to provide sufficient ASL interpretation, the White House is violating deaf Americans' rights under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 from accessing 'critical information in real time.'
US District Judge Amir Ali, one of former President Joe Biden's final appointees, did not immediately issue a ruling, but he appeared sympathetic to the group's arguments.
Without live ASL interpretations readily available at White House briefings, NAD attorney Ian Hoffman argued, deaf Americans are 'deprived of their ability to participate in the democratic process.'
The Biden administration had staffed all of its press briefings with qualified ASL interpreters, but that policy was discontinued by the Trump White House earlier this year.
In court on Wednesday, the Justice Department argued that the current accessibility services offered by the administration — including live closed captions and written transcripts – are sufficient in providing the deaf community with 'meaningful access' to White House information.
In briefings, the NAD had pushed back on this argument, asserting that ASL and English are distinct languages and that closed captioning is 'especially inaccessible to the many thousands of deaf persons fluent only in ASL.'
Ali pressed Hedges about the utility of written transcriptions.
'How does it help to point to things that may not be adequate?' he said, asking why DOJ hadn't presented evidence to show that written means were sufficiently able to inform the deaf community.
Hodges responded that the burden was on the plaintiffs to show that more thorough ASL translations were necessary and repeated her previous claim that the type of services provided should be at the discretion of the White House.
The National Association for the Deaf also took aim at the first Trump administration in 2020 for its failure to provide ASL interpretation during important Covid-19 briefings.
In that suit, a federal judge ordered the White House to provide in-frame videos of ASL interpreters during televised press events. In his ruling, US District Judge James Boasberg specifically clarified that written means such as transcripts and closed captions — the methods emphasized by the DOJ — 'may constitute a reasonable accommodation under some circumstances, but not here.'
After Boasberg's order, the first Trump White House began providing ASL interpreters for all pandemic-related press events. When Biden took office in 2021, his administration expanded accessibility programs and began staffing all press briefings with ASL interpreters. But on the first day of his second administration, Trump halted the use of all ASL interpreters at White House briefings, prompting the lawsuit filed in May.
The courtroom on Wednesday was flooded with members of the deaf community showing their support for the plaintiffs. ASL interpreters provided live translations throughout the duration of the nearly 90-minute hearing.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
26 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Democrat Jeffries Sets Record In Speech Delaying House Vote on Trump Bill
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries broke the record for the House's longest 'magic minute' floor speech Thursday, using his unlimited speaking privileges to drag House Republicans' megabill vote hours past the intended schedule. New Yorker Jeffries' speech passed the previous record held by then-Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of eight hours and 32 minutes. Not only did Jeffries' rambling remarks delay President Donald Trump's tax bill vote — they also brought his criticisms of the GOP agenda onto the most popular morning news shows.
Bloomberg
26 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump to Start Tariff Letters on Friday, Floats Range of 10%-70%
By and Stephanie Lai Updated on Save US President Donald Trump said that his administration will start sending out letters to trading partners on Friday setting unilateral tariff rates, which he said countries would have to begin paying on Aug. 1 Trump told reporters that about '10 or 12' letters would go out Friday, with additional letters coming 'over the next few days.'
Bloomberg
26 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
US House Passes Tax Bill, Sending It to Trump
CC-Transcript 00:00Eventually we got this. The president had said there was going to be no more negotiations. This was going to be done by the July 4th holiday. It is July 3rd in the afternoon, and at least passage of the bill is now complete. What's next? The next thing is the president plans to sign the legislation tomorrow. And you can bet that there's now going to be a giant message war between Democrats and Republicans over whether this is good for America or bad for America. We already had 8 hours and 35 minutes of Hakeem Jeffries speaking about how this was disgusting, just to use one of the phrases. But he essentially railed against this bill the entire time. What are the most contentious aspects of this bill? So the Democratic case is that this is essentially a Robin Hood in reverse religious legislation that it takes from the poor and gives to the rich. And indeed, a lot of the direct benefits from this book go to wealthy people and companies. And a lot of the safety net cuts will wind up hurting relatively low income Americans. The Republican view is, hey, there's $4.5 trillion in tax cuts here to goose the economy, get growth going, and that growth will ultimately we're down to the benefit of Americans. And in fact, we had Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant on Bloomberg TV just a few minutes ago, just before this bill was passed. And he mentioned that when the CBO was scoring the bill, it didn't even take into account any revenue from tariffs that could ultimately be up to $2 trillion, which would also help to offset some of the costs. I'm curious, how did the president win over holdouts? Because there came a time when there were no more negotiations and still the members of the House Freedom Caucus did seem to fall into line. So there were very strong disagreements on parts of this legislation, some from conservatives and some from moderate. But generally most of the Republicans were very much in favor of the tax cuts and the increases in defense spending and immigration enforcement that are the core of the bill. The disagreements were the fiscal conservatives often felt like, hey, this is going to add more than $3 trillion to the deficit. That's a lot of money. We want to see more spending cuts on the moderate side from Republicans. People who are vulnerable to challenges in swing districts were saying, hey, we're going to cut $1,000,000,000,000 from Medicaid. This is going to wind up hurting people and costing us in the election. So you had one camp saying we want to cut more spending and the other camp saying, hey, you're cutting too much. But at the end of the day, they wanted these tax cuts. President Trump has huge sway over the Republican Party. This is the one piece of legislation he wants. He cranked up the pressure and they more or less agree with the main pillars of it. Should we expect executive orders or anything like that? Was anything promised in the background that might appear over the next two weeks, two months? So there were these discussions with the fiscal conservatives in which they received reassurances about executive action. Now, they haven't detailed exactly what those promises are, so we don't know exactly. But for instance, one of them was talking about the president's going to take a very hard line on clean energy permitting and things to make sure that there aren't too many clean energy projects that became eligible for clean energy tax credits before they expire in about a year or so, particularly for wind and solar installations. There were also received assurances. So they say that the Medicaid stuff will be stringently enforced and consequently reduce Medicaid spending as much as possible. But we haven't heard that from the president and we haven't gotten, you know, very clear examples of that. And then, you know, it depends on what he actually does. Well, exactly, Mike. And to that point is this now peak Trump. Will his supporters, the MAGA supporters, see any benefits or any portions of them see any benefit from this bill immediately? And if not, what does it mean for the midterms? Well, there were a lot of the things that appeal to populists were front loaded in the beginning of the bill. So, for instance, elderly Americans will get a bigger standard deduction on their income taxes. Workers who get tips or overtime pay will get it for the next four years. A portion of that pay exempted from taxes for a lot of Americans with families. There'll be an increase in the maximum child tax credit. So there are some tangible things that help. The sort of rank and file Trump voters, and they will come early. The spending cuts will be backloaded more.
