District Court Says Maryland, D.C. Have Standing in Emoluments Case Against Trump

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

Judge Peter J. Messitte (D. Md.) ruled today that Maryland and D.C. have standing to sue President Trump for violations of the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses. At the same time, Judge Messitte said that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue with regard to Trump properties other than the Trump International Hotel in D.C.

The ruling says nothing about the merits and only means that the case can move forward, beyond this preliminary stage. Recall that a district judge ruled the other way in CREW's Emoluments Clause case against President Trump.

The case involves Maryland's and D.C.'s challenge to payments that President Trump receives as owner of his world-wide properties. The plaintiffs argue that these payments violate the Domestic and Foreign Emoluments Clauses. The President moved to dismiss the case based on lack of standing. Today the district court denied that motion.

The court ruled that the plaintiffs sufficiently alleged injuries-in-fact to their quasi-sovereign, proprietary, and parens patriae interests. As to their quasi-sovereign interest, the court said that other states' use of the Trump International Hotel on official business "rather clearly suggests that Maryland and the District of Columbia may very well feel themselves obliged, i.e., coerced, to patronize the Hotel in order to help them obtain federal favors." As to proprietary interests, the court said that "the President's ownership interest in the Hotel has had an almost certainly will continue to have an unlawful effect on competition, allowing an inference of impending (if not already occurring) injury to Plaintiffs' proprietary interests" in their own properties. Finally, as to the plaintiffs' parens patriae interest, the court said that "[i]t can hardly be gainsaid that a large number of Maryland and District of Columbia residents are being affected and will continue to be affected when foreign and state governments choose to stay, host events, or dine at the Hotel rather than at comparable Maryland or District of Columbia establishments, in whole or in substantial part simply because of the President's association with it."

The court also held that the plaintiffs sufficiently pleaded causation and redressability, and that the plaintiffs fell within the "zone of interests" of the Emoluments Clauses and that the case was not a nonjusticiable political question.

The court, citing a string of Supreme Court precedent, said that the plaintiffs' request for injunctive and declaratory relief against the President didn't violate the separation of powers.

But the court limited the case to a challenge based on the President's interest in the Trump International Hotel in D.C. (and not based on other Trump properties around the country or around the world). The court did not foreclose challenges based on those other properties in other cases, but said only that Maryland and D.C. had failed sufficiently to plead standing against Trump-owned properties outside D.C.