Trump hotel Trump International Hotel in D.C. Photo: Michael Scarcella.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the dismissal of claims alleging President Donald Trump's continued interest in his private business entities is violating the U.S. Constitution's check against foreign and domestic influence of the White House.

The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia do not have standing to pursue claims that Trump is violating the Constitution's emoluments clause. The court, siding with Trump, ordered a Maryland trial judge to dismiss the case with prejudice, a move that forecloses the ability of the plaintiffs to amend their complaint.

The novel ruling was the first—but will not be the last—to confront emoluments-clause claims against the president. Trump's business empire, in which he continues to have an interest, is the centerpiece of several emoluments cases and related litigation about the president's financial tax returns and other financial information. Up until the emoluments cases against Trump, “no court has ever entertained a claim to enforce them,” the Fourth Circuit panel noted.

“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,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote for the unanimous panel.

Niemeyer heard the case with Judges Dennis Shedd and A. Marvin Quattlebaum, who was appointed to the bench by Trump. The judges, each joining the bench under a Republican president, expressed skepticism at oral argument in March over the viability of the emoluments claims.

The plaintiffs could ask the full bench of Fourth Circuit judges to review the panel decision, or the challengers could go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices haven't yet weighed the scope of the emoluments clause in Trump-related litigation.

The Fourth Circuit's ruling doesn't end Trump's potential exposure to the emoluments act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is weighing a separate challenge in a case brought by more than 200 Democratic lawmakers. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has rejected Trump's push to stop the claims.

Trump filed his appeal in that case this week, and he has asked for a ruling by July 22, seven days before various Trump entities are required to respond to congressional subpoenas that were issued in the litigation.

The D.C. Circuit, separately, is set to hear arguments on Friday from Trump's lawyers in a congressional subpoena dispute. A federal trial judge recently upheld a House subpoena seeking information from Trump's longtime accounting firm Mazars USA. Trump's lawyers at Consovoy McCarthy argue the subpoena is overbroad and outside the committee's authority.

House lawyers are also suing in Washington's federal trial court to force the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department to disclose, via subpoena, several years' of Trump's tax returns. Federal law requires the IRS to release to the House, on request, the tax returns of any private citizen.

The tax returns case is pending before U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee to the trial bench.

 

The Fourth Circuit's ruling is posted below:

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