A federal judge rejected White House arguments to delay his order to end its ban on access to the Associated Press due to their editorial choices.

In an order today, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden wrote that in asking for a stay until after a decision is rendered on appeal, the government “has not shown it is likely to succeed on the merits.”

Read the latest Trump AP decision.

Earlier this week, McFadden, a Trump appointee, ruled in favor of the AP on First Amendment grounds, ruling that “under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.”

In February, Trump and his aides banned the AP’s White House hard pass holders from pool coverage of Oval Office events, as well as other presidential appearances, including those in the East Room and at Mar-a-Lago. The AP also was restricted from travel on Air Force One. The reason given was that the AP, in its style guidance, refused to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America following the president’s executive order.

The AP sued, arguing that the White House’s restrictions on its access amount to “viewpoint discrimination” under the First Amendment.

The judge agreed, and granted the news organization a preliminary injunction. But he gave the White House until April 13 for the order to go into effect.

McFadden’s order is that the White House must “immediately rescind the denial of the AP’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other limited spaces based on the AP’s viewpoint when such spaces are made open to other members of the White House press pool.”  He also ordered the White House to rescind the denial of access to events opened to all credentialed journalists. 

Justice Department lawyers then asked for a further delay until there was na outcome in the appeal. The DOJ’s lawyer, Brian Hudak, wrote that the judge’s decision was “an unprecedented intrusion into executive authority.”

“It would be unreasonable for the president to lose the right to control who is in his private spaces (including his private home, the Mar-A-Lago Club) simply because he becomes president,” he wrote in the motion for a stay.

McFadden, though, wrote that the government was trying an “intimate spaces” exception to the First Amendment that was “untethered from precedent.”

“The first so-called intimate space the Government addresses is the Oval Office,” McFadden wrote. “It is the President’s formal office, to which Defendants regularly invite a rotating group of 21 journalists for ‘pool sprays’ and historic meetings with world leaders.” He noted that the president has other workspaces where he does not routinely invite a gaggle of reporters, including the Oval Office study and the Treaty Room on the second floor of the residence.

The judge also noted that on Air Force One, the president “travels in first class territory in the nose of this Boeing 747, while the press pool is confined to the rear of the plane…The Government’s claim that this jumbo jet configuration is an intimate space is simply not credible.”

As for Mar-A-Lago, the judge wrote that while the resort includes Trump’s private quarters, it also includes “large public rooms open for rental.” Trump held an event there with “many journalists and local officers in the audience.”

“Whether forum analysis applies to private property in this Government-use context is a close question that the Court need not resolve now — especially considering the parties did not brief on it,” McFadden wrote.

He added, “Whether or not forum analysis applies here, the Government has given no reason to believe that the First Amendment’s retaliation doctrine stops at the threshold of private buildings used for Government functions. And the burden, at this juncture, is the Government’s.”