analysis

Emoluments: District Court Directs Maryland, D.C. Case to Move Forward

Jennifer Hepneranalysis, emoluments

On July 25th, 2018, a United States District Court Judge in Greenbelt, Maryland ruled that the Attorneys General of the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia could move forward in their lawsuit against President Trump. The Attorneys General claim that the President’s actions in relation to his continued involvement in the Trump Organization—specifically the Trump Hotel—violate the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

While the Foreign Emoluments Clause bans, without Congressional approval, “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State,” the Domestic Clause bars the President from receiving any benefits other than his compensation from federal, state, or local governments. The Plaintiffs in this case have “convincingly argued” that an “emolument” in both the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses, is any “profit,” “gain,” or “advantage,” that one might receive. While the President claims that the Plaintiffs have interpreted the term “emolument” too broadly, the presence in the Emoluments Clauses of modifiers such as “any” and “of any kind whatever” indicates that “the term was meant to have the widest scope and applicability.”

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Travel Ban III: Supreme Court Reviews Travel Ban

Declaration 17analysis, immigration, travel ban

On April 25, 2018 the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments for the landmark case State Of Hawai’i And Ishmael Elshikh vs. Donald J. Trump, et al in which the State of Hawaii sued the federal government to stop the implementation of Executive Order No. 13,780. The executive order, which is titled “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.”, is President Trump’s third attempt at a travel ban and it restricts the entry of foreign nationals from 6 specified Muslim countries and two non-Muslim majority nations  (Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, North Korea, Venezuela and Chad). Chad was later removed from the Travel Ban on April 11, 2018. It also suspends entrants from the United States refugee program for specified periods of time.

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Emoluments: Maryland Federal Court Holds Plaintiffs Have Standing in Challenge

Declaration 17analysis, emoluments

On March 28, 2018, a Maryland District Court denied-in-part President Trump’s Motion to Dismiss a lawsuit (The District of Columbia and The State of Maryland v. Donald J. Trump, individually and in his official capacity as President of the United States), alleging that Trump violated the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses. The case was filed by the Attorneys General of the District of Columbia and Maryland. The plaintiffs argue that Trump’s emoluments violations harm the sovereign, quasi-sovereign, proprietary and parens patriae interests of Maryland and the District of Columbia. In addition, the plaintiffs argue that Trump’s violations harm the interest of Maryland and D.C. in “protecting their economies and residents.”

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Supreme Court Update: Court Declines DACA Review

Matthew Sundayanalysis, immigration

On February 26, 2018, the Supreme Court declined to hear the Trump Administration’s appeal to the decision for the DACA case in the Northern District of California. In an unusual step, called “certiorari before judgment,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) had not only appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, to review the Northern District of California’s decision, but simultaneously requested the Supreme Court to immediately take up the case, bypass the Ninth Circuit, and issue an emergency ruling on the merits. Certiorari before judgement has typically been used only in major cases involving national crises that require immediate resolution, such as in the cases Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, when President Harry Truman attempted to seize control of the U.S. Steel industry for the war effort in Korea, or U.S. v. Nixon when President Richard Nixon’s refused a special prosecutor’s subpoena to turn over White House tape recordings.

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Department of Justice Takes Issue with California “Sanctuary City” Laws

Matthew Sundayanalysis, immigration

On March 6, 2018, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint against the State of California in the Eastern District of California (United States of America v. California) over three new “Sanctuary City” laws signed by Governor Jerry Brown that took effect at the start of this year that limit the California police departments to cooperate, share information with, and transfer detained undocumented individuals to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The DOJ’s Complaint relies on the broad authority of the Executive Branch to enforce immigration laws, as well as the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution that establishes, as the Complaint cites, “a state enactment is invalid if it ‘stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress,’ Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U.S. 52, 67 (1941), or if it ‘discriminate[s] against the United States or those with whom it deals,” South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505, 523 (1988).’” The DOJ also cites that California does not generally apply similar laws that limit cooperation with other federal agencies, and thus the DOJ claims that these Sanctuary City laws are discriminatory toward the agencies that enforce compliance with federal immigration laws.

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