The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “threw out a lawsuit by more than 200 Democratic members of Congress that alleged President Trump was improperly profiting from his presidency.”
The three judges ruled unanimously. They agreed “the lawmakers didn’t have legal standing to proceed with their claims.”
In the opinion, the judges said the Democratic lawmakers “couldn’t assert the institutional interests of the House or Senate against the president because the group didn’t constitute a majority in the legislature and couldn’t represent Congress as a whole.”
The judges also wrote:
“The Members can, and likely will, continue to use their weighty voices to make their case to the American people, their colleagues in the Congress and the President himself, all of whom are free to engage that argument as they see fit,” the judges wrote. “But we will not—indeed we cannot—participate in this debate.”
The lawmakers filed the lawsuit in June 2017. Professor Jacobson wrote at that time, “In a rational world, this lawsuit would have zero chance of success.”
Professor Jacobson is traveling, but sent in this message:
“It is not surprising that the lawsuit was thrown out. Democrats have been following people like Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe off a political and legal cliff with legal theories stretching to get Trump. While some District Courts buy into these theories, they almost uniformly have failed at the appeals court and Supreme Court level. It takes time, but legal sanity eventually prevails.”
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