A federal judge on Wednesday ordered White House senior staff and top advisers to comply with the Presidential Records Act, rejecting the Justice Department’s claim that the 47-year-old law is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge John Bates, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, issued a 54-page ruling granting a preliminary injunction that reinstates records-preservation requirements for most employees in the Executive Office of the President. The injunction takes effect at 9 a.m. on May 26.
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the National Security Council, the Council of Economic Advisers, and other executive branch employees are covered by the order. President Trump and Vice President JD Vance are not named in the directive.
The ruling responds directly to an April opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which declared the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional on the grounds that it exceeds Congress’ authority over the executive branch. The White House issued its own guidance following that opinion, which critics argued would permit deletion of text messages and other informal communications related to official business.
Judge Bates disagreed. He wrote that the Presidential Records Act is “likely constitutional,” citing Congress’ longstanding authority over government property. He noted that presidents have complied with the law for 50 years without claiming it violated separation of powers.
“To adopt the government’s position that the Act is unconstitutional would disable Congress and future Presidents from reflecting on experience, in defiance of the very words engraved on the National Archives Building in Washington: ‘What is past is prologue,'” Bates wrote, quoting Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”
The judge also addressed which records count as official. The White House had argued that informal texts and messages did not require preservation. Bates ruled that messages dealing with government business or decision-making, even those sent from private devices, can qualify as presidential records under the law, and that it is Congress, not the White House, that decides which categories of records must be saved.
The lawsuit was brought by the American Historical Association, government watchdog group American Oversight, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
“Today’s ruling is an important victory for presidential accountability,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, following the decision. “The court recognized the serious danger posed by the administration’s attempt to cast aside longstanding federal law governing presidential records.”
The Presidential Records Act was enacted in 1978, four years after Richard Nixon’s resignation, to establish that White House documents belong to the U.S. government rather than the president personally. The law requires most records to be transferred to the National Archives at the end of an administration.
