Once again, it seems that the squatter currently occupying the White House is appealing a decision in a lawsuit—and going for the jugular as he does so.
The lawsuit at issue was filed by the National Association for the Deaf and two named plaintiffs in May 2025, when the White House abruptly stopped including American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters at press briefings following the squatter’s return to office. The suit argued that his administration needs to include sign language interpretation as part of its public communications, including press briefings. Choosing to eliminate this, the complaint said, violates Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits federal agencies discriminating on the basis of disability.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee by former President Joe Biden, ruled in November that the White House must provide a qualified ASL interpreter at all publicly announced press briefings conducted by the squatter or his press secretary. But in their appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, attorneys with the squatter’s Department of Justice argued that people with disabilities don’t have the right to sue federal agencies under Section 504. “The Rehabilitation Act’s text, structure, and history,” the appeal states, “does not provide a private right of action against federal agencies in their programmatic capacities.”
Several advocacy groups—including the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, the American Association of People with Disabilities, Justice in Aging, the National Federation of the Blind, and Paralyzed Veterans of America—filed an amicus brief in the case.
“For more than four decades, disabled people have relied on the private right of action under Section 504 to hold the federal government accountable when it discriminates,” the brief states. “Those gains were not won through agency self-policing. They were won by disabled people going to court. A ruling eliminating that right as to executive agencies would close the courthouse door to the many millions of disabled people who participate in federal programs, at precisely the moment when federal enforcement of disability rights is most uncertain.”
A victory by the squatter’s administration, said Amy Robertson, an attorney who filed this brief, “would mean it would be more difficult to challenge discrimination by any federal agencies.
This is not the first time that the National Association of the Deaf has sued the squatter over the lack of ASL interpreters. It did so previously, during his first term, in an August 2020 lawsuit which said the squatter “stands alone in holding televised briefings regarding the COVID-19 pandemic without ever having provided any ASL interpretation.” In response, a federal district court ordered the White House to provide interpreters for all COVID-19-related briefings.
In that case, as in the more current one, the squatter’s administration appealed, but that appeal was dismissed in March 2021 at the urging of the new Biden Administration, which agreed to provide ASL interpreters for all public briefings.
Now, the squatter is again fighting back against a court ruling that upholds the rights of disabled people, instead of just complying with the law. He wants to make it harder for us to sue federal government scofflaws, like him.