If the Emoluments Clauses “give no rights and provide no remedies,” who can enforce them against the President of the United States? Not states, according to the Fourth Circuit, even if they’re home to properties owned by the president.

The court dismissed a suit brought by the attorneys general of Washington, D.C., and Maryland that claimed Donald Trump continues to accept money from state and foreign governments via his Washington hotel and business empire, therefore violating the domestic and foreign emoluments clauses of the U.S. Constitution. “The District and Maryland’s interest in enforcing the Emoluments Clauses is so attenuated and abstract that their prosecution of this case readily provokes the question of whether this action against the President is an appropriate use of the courts, which were created to resolve real cases and controversies between the parties,” wrote Judge Paul Niemeyer.

Not a Case, Not a Controversy

While the Fourth Circuit conceded that its grant of Trump’s writ of mandamus was unusual, it called the suit itself “an extraordinary one”:

“[T]he District and Maryland’s interest in constitutional governance is no more than a generalized grievance,” the court’s three-judge panel reasoned, “insufficient to amount to a case or controversy within the meaning of Article III.”

Every Citizen’s Interest in Proper Application of the Constitution

If the District of Columbia, home of the president’s Trump International Hotel, lacks standing to enforce the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses, it’s difficult to see who or what could. Under the Fourth Circuit’s distinction between “concrete” and “hypothetical” injuries, merely getting to the discovery stage on an emoluments claim could be impossible:

And the Supreme Court has “consistently held that a plaintiff raising only a generally available grievance about government – claiming only harm to his and every citizen’s interest in proper application of the Constitution and laws, and seeking relief that no more directly and tangibly benefits him than it does the public at large – does not state an Article III case or controversy.”

The Maryland and D.C. attorneys general, however, vowed to continue their legal challenge, claiming the court “failed to acknowledge the most extraordinary circumstance of all: President Trump is brazenly profiting from the Office of the President in ways that no other President in history ever imagined and that the founders expressly sought – in the Constitution – to prohibit.”

  • U.S. Appeals Court Hands Win to Trump in Hotel ‘Emoluments’ Case (Reuters)
  • D.C. Trump Hotel Emoluments Case Can Proceed (FindLaw’s U.S. Fourth Circuit Blog)
  • 4th Circuit Strikes Travel Ban 3.0 for Discrimination (FindLaw’s U.S. Fourth Circuit Blog)
  • Fourth Cir. Refuses to Stay Injunction on Transgender Military Ban (FindLaw’s U.S. Fourth Circuit Blog)

You Don’t Have To Solve This on Your Own – Get a Lawyer’s Help

Civil Rights

Block on Trump’s Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court

Criminal

Judges Can Release Secret Grand Jury Records

Politicians Can’t Block Voters on Facebook, Court Rules