The Associated Press is suing three Trump officials, claiming the White House violated the First and Fifth Amendments by limiting the global news agency’s access to presidential events. In its lawsuit, the AP repeatedly cites a 1977 U.S. Court of Appeals ruling often overlooked in the annals of history.

The story of the case, Sherrill v. Knight, dates back to 1966, when Robert Sherrill, a reporter for The Nation, applied for a White House press pass but was denied. The Secret Service refused to disclose its reasoning, and Sherrill sued H. Stuart Knight, who became the federal agency’s director in 1973, and other government officials.

Sherrill’s five-year legal saga ended in 1977 when an appeals court ruled in his favor. Here’s what happened and why the AP — and CNN — have recently cited the case in their own lawsuits.

Who was Robert Sherrill?

Sherrill, who once described himself as a “radical independent” journalist, joined The Nation in 1965 after previous stints at The Texas Observer, The Miami Herald and other newspapers, according to his 2014 New York Times obituary.

Though not explicitly mentioned in the 1977 ruling, Sherrill was an outspoken critic of President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1967, Sherrill published “The Accidental President,” a scathing criticism of Johnson’s rise to power, policies and character. The book describes Johnson as an “insufferable and dangerous fellow” and a “fascinatingly rousing bastard.”

“Devotees of ‘The Nation’ know that Washington correspondent Robert Sherrill intensely dislikes President Johnson (and gets reciprocal treatment),” reads an April 1967 book review in the Courier-Post, a newspaper covering Southern New Jersey.

Press pass denied

In 1966, Sherrill was a Washington correspondent for The Nation with press passes for the U.S. House and Senate press galleries. That year, he applied for — and was denied — a press pass for the Johnson White House. Court records say the Secret Service declined to share its reasoning with Sherrill and The Nation.

In January 1972, with Richard Nixon in the White House, Sherrill reapplied for a White House press press. Again, the request was denied, according to legal documents.

The White House cited later “reasons of security” — a statement the 1977 appeals court decision described as “unnecessarily vague and subject to ambiguous interpretation.” The American Civil Liberties Union stepped in and filed a Freedom of Information Act to request access to documents on the matter. But the Secret Service claimed the records were exempt from disclosure.

A government official later said Sherrill was denied a press pass after the Secret Service’s background check revealed an incident where Sherrill was arrested for punching the governor of Florida’s press secretary, who described Sherrill as “mentally unbalanced.” (The background check also flagged a 1962 assault charge in Texas.)

Sherrill moved to file a federal lawsuit alleging government officials violated his First Amendment and due process rights as a journalist.

Also around this time, Sherrill appeared on Nixon’s “Enemies List,” a compilation of the president’s political adversaries written by White House staff and first made public during the 1973 Watergate hearings.

A district court ruling found the Secret Service infringed on Sherrill’s First and Fifth Amendment rights and ordered it to “devise and publicize narrow and specific standards” for denying press passes.

The government moved to appeal, arguing it would have violated Sherrill’s First Amendment rights had its decision been based on the content of the journalist’s speech.

But a D.C. circuit court largely upheld the lower court’s decision in 1977. It mandated the Secret Service, upon denying a press pass, give journalists notice, a chance to respond and a final written decision. The court also said press access cannot “be denied arbitrarily or for less than compelling reasons” under the First Amendment.

The appeals court’s decision, however, also granted the Secret Service “considerable leeway” in making expert decisions related to the security of the president and his family.

Recounting the legal saga in a December 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sherrill said, “The fun thing about this was that when I was finally going to get a press pass, I never applied. I didn’t want to be in the White House.”

Sherrill continued writing for The Nation until the early 2000s and, by his death at 89 in 2014, had published at least 130 signed articles, plus several books.

The 1977 decision, revisited

In late 2018, CNN cited Sherrill v. Knight in its federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, during President Donald Trump’s first term, after the White House revoked reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass following a contentious exchange at a post-midterm elections news conference.

CNN alleged the White House violated the reporter’s First and Fifth Amendment rights — and pointed to the Sherrill decision in its arguments. (Acosta’s press access was later reinstated and the charges were dropped.)

Now, the White House faces ongoing litigation from the AP, which sued White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and two other Trump officials 10 days after the White House restricted its access.

Trump personally decided to limit the news wire service’s access after the AP said it would continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico by its original name while acknowledging the body of water’s new name in the U.S. — Gulf of America — was mandated by Trump through an executive order at the start of his second term.

In a response to the lawsuit, the White House said special media access to a president is “a quintessentially discretionary presidential choice that infringes no constitutional right.”

“There is no right to have special access to the Oval Office,” a White House attorney said, according to CBS News.

Citing Sherrill, the AP claims the White House gave the news wire service “no prior or written notice of, and no formal opportunity to challenge, (this) arbitrary determination.”

“The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government,” the AP said in its lawsuit.

In February, a federal judge refused to immediately order the White House to reinstate the AP’s full access to presidential events but urged the Trump administration to reconsider its decision, describing it as “uniformly unhelpful to the White House.” By the time the AP returned to a federal courtroom in late March, the White House still hadn’t acted.

Correction (Tuesday, April 8): Robert Sherrill worked for a stint at The Texas Observer, not The Texas Tribune, which didn’t exist at the time.