Emoluments: DC Federal Court Holds Plaintiffs Have Standing to Sue
On September 28th, 2018, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied-in-part President Trump’s Motion to Dismiss and found that the plaintiffs have standing to sue in Senator Richard Blumenthal et al., v. Donald J. Trump, in his official capacity as President of the United States. The plaintiffs, 201 minority members of Congress led by Senator Richard Blumenthal, allege that President Trump violated the Foreign Emoluments Clause, which states that “no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State”
Judge Sullivan ruled that “each time the President allegedly accepts a foreign emolument without seeking congressional consent, plaintiffs suffer a concrete and particularized injury—the deprivation of the right to vote on whether to consent to the President’s acceptance of the prohibited foreign emolument—before he accepts it. And although the injury is an institutional one, the injury is personal to legislators entitled to cast the vote that was nullified.” Thus, Judge Sullivan ruled that plaintiffs have standing to bring the claims because they adequately alleged that their injury-in-fact can only be “redressed by a favorable judicial decision”—not a legislative remedy.