Federal Judge Orders White House to Comply With Presidential Records Act

A federal judge on May 20 ordered Trump administration officials to comply with a federal law requiring the preservation of presidential records.

Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that a legal opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) within the Department of Justice (DOJ) stating that the law is unconstitutional is likely invalid.

The plaintiffs showed that there was a “substantial risk” that the Trump administration was not fully complying with the Presidential Records Act of 1978, the judge said.

Bates said the federal government “suffers only minimal (if any) harm from complying” with the act.

“It has complied with the Act without complaint for almost 50 years, including during the first Trump administration and the first year of the current one,” he wrote.

Before the act, presidential records were deemed to be the president’s personal property. The act provides that records created or received by the president, vice president, and their staff in their official capacities are public property. The statute requires that such records be preserved for their eventual submission to the National Archives and Records Administration when a president’s term ends.

The OLC opinion issued on April 1 states that the act is unconstitutional “because it exceeds Congress’s enumerated and implied powers and aggrandizes the Legislative Branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the Executive.”

According to the document, the act claims to regulate the presidency, a constitutionally established office that Congress did not create and cannot abolish.

“Just as Congress could not constitutionally invade the independence of the Supreme Court and expropriate the papers of the Chief Justice or Associate Justices, Congress cannot invade the independence of the President and expropriate the papers of the Chief Executive,” the legal opinion states.

The American Historical Association and the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued to block the OLC opinion, arguing that following the legal opinion would be illegal and harmful.

The American Historical Association argued in court for the invalidation of the OLC opinion, saying that without court intervention, records documenting presidential decision-making could be “lost to history.”

In a filing with the court, the DOJ made an argument echoing the language of the OLC opinion, saying that the act is “an unconstitutional and ahistorical imposition on presidential autonomy.”

“Just as it would flout the separation of powers for Congress to require the Supreme Court to broadly disclose its deliberative records to the public pursuant to legislative edict, so it is with the [act],” the department said.

Bates said in his ruling that “the original public meaning of the text of the Constitution, canons of interpretation, Supreme Court precedent, general principles of property law, and almost 50 years of practice confirm that Congress has the enumerated power to regulate presidential records under the [Constitution’s] Property Clause.”

The judge said that the OLC opinion relies on the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Tyler v. Hennepin County but that it provides “a stark misreading of the case,” in which the justices ruled unanimously that a Minnesota county wronged a grandmother when it forced the sale of her condominium over an unpaid tax debt and kept the sale proceeds that far exceeded the tax she owed.

The federal government argued that the precedent means that Congress is unable to “redefine property rights by statute in the face of historical practice.”

However, in Tyler, the high court found that a state “may not extinguish a property interest that it recognizes everywhere else to avoid paying just compensation when it is the one doing the taking,” Bates said.

Bates issued a preliminary injunction that applies to federal officials other than President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, the National Archives and Records Administration and its head, DOJ, and the attorney general. The federal officials he chose not to exempt from his order may not rely on the OLC opinion and must comply with the act.

Bates declined for the time being to order Trump to follow the provisions of the statute after he leaves office, saying that it was “premature” to do so. Although the plaintiffs have established “imminent injury with respect to current violations of the Act by defendants, it is far less clear what President Trump will do with respect to his obligations under the Act when leaving office in almost three years,” he said.

The American Historical Association hailed the judge’s decision.

“This ruling reaffirms the essential place of presidential records in documenting our nation’s history and a core principle of the Presidential Records Act: that these records belong to the American people, not to any one individual,” Sarah Weicksel, the association’s executive director, said in a statement.

“By requiring continued compliance with the Presidential Records Act, this preliminary injunction is an important step forward in ensuring that the documents that tell our nation’s history are preserved for future generations.”

The Trump administration rejected the judge’s ruling.

“President Trump is the most transparent and accessible President in history,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Epoch Times in a statement.

“The Administration has made it crystal clear we will maintain a rigorous records retention program in order to properly preserve all materials related to: the performance of staff duties for historical value, the administrative record of policy decisions and actions, and litigation needs.

“[The court decision] fundamentally misunderstands the Administration’s position and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail.”