Washington — A pair of organizations filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the Justice Department’s determination that a federal law requiring the preservation of certain presidential records is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., by the American Historical Association, the largest membership association of historians in the world, and American Oversight, a nonprofit government watchdog group.
The legal fight involves a memorandum opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that declared the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional. The Justice Department said as a result of its determination about the constitutionality of the law, President Trump does not need to comply with it.
“This case is about the preservation of records that document our nation’s history, and whether the American people are able to access and learn from that history,” the complaint from the two nonprofit groups says. “Yet the stakes of this case are even greater. The Executive Branch has declared the power to override the legal determinations of the U.S. Supreme Court, in order to override the laws passed by Congress to preserve and provide public access to official records of the President’s activities.”
The groups are seeking a court order upholding the Presidential Records Act and requiring Mr. Trump and senior White House officials to comply with their duties under the law. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell has been assigned to the case.
The Presidential Records Act
The Presidential Records Act was enacted in 1978 in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It established that presidential records belong to the U.S. government, not the president personally, and must be preserved. The law requires certain White House records to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of a presidential administration.
The measure governs the records of the president, vice president and certain parts of the Executive Office of the President, like the National Security Council. It sets out the requirements for the maintenance, access and preservation of information during and after a presidency.
The law has been in place for more than four decades. But last week, Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, who leads the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in an opinion that the Presidential Records Act “exceeds Congress’s enumerated and implied powers, and it aggrandizes the Legislative Branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the Executive.” The statute, he wrote, “serves no identifiable and valid legislative purpose.”
Gaiser wrote that the law is not a valid exercise of Congress’s authority and intrudes on the president’s independence and autonomy. Opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel bind the executive branch, but if a court reaches a different interpretation of a legal question, that determination prevails.
In their lawsuit, the American Historical Association and American Oversight argue that the Justice Department’s decision violates the separation of powers and defies Supreme Court precedent, which ruled against former President Richard Nixon in upholding a similar law regarding the preservation of presidential papers.
The groups said that since the Presidential Records Act took effect 45 years ago, no administration has questioned its constitutionality or argued it unduly interferes with the president’s ability to discharge his duties under the Constitution. The lawsuit noted that in Mr. Trump’s first administration, the White House Counsel’s Office reminded staff of their responsibility to preserve and maintain records as required by the law. Even in his current administration, the government has also indicated it would work to comply with the records law, the groups said.
“In the Administration’s view, the records of the official activities of the President and nearly 1,000 White House employees — generated using taxpayer funds, on government property, regarding official government business — belong to the President personally, and not to the American people,” they wrote in the complaint. “Government for the people, by the people, and of the people this is not.”
The groups warned that there is “strong reason” to believe Mr. Trump will keep presidential records for himself at the end of his term in January 2029 and pointed to his decision to hold onto a slew of documents when his first administration ended in January 2021.
After Mr. Trump left the White House the first time, the National Archives ultimately collected 15 boxes of material from his South Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, after months of wrangling. The boxes contained thousands of documents, some of which were marked classified.
The president claimed the Presidential Records Act allowed him to keep the documents because they were personal. He was indicted on more than three dozen charges stemming from his alleged mishandling of sensitive government records, but the case ended after he was elected to a second term in November 2024.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new lawsuit.
