The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday threw out Democratic members of Congress' lawsuit alleging President Donald Trump is violating the Constitution's Emoluments Clause.

In its order, the court vacated a district court judge's ruling that found lawmakers had standing to sue, a significant blow to Democrats who have long sought to hold Trump accountable for the alleged Emoluments Clause violations tied to accepting foreign payments at his Washington, D.C.-based hotel.

"Because we conclude that the Members lack standing, we reverse the district court and remand with instructions to dismiss their complaint," Judges Karen LeCraft Henderson, Thomas Griffith and David Tatel said in a per curiam opinion.

They found that, after past U.S. Supreme Court rulings on individual legislators' ability to sue, "only an institution can assert an institutional injury provided the injury is not 'wholly abstract and widely dispersed.'"

"Here, regardless of rigor, our conclusion is straightforward because the members—29 Senators and 186 members of the House of Representatives—do not constitute a majority of either body and are, therefore, powerless to approve or deny the President's acceptance of foreign emoluments," the opinion reads.

"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 judges only ruled on the issue of whether the members had standing. They did not ruled on the district court's finding that the Democrats had a cause of action and stated a claim, dismissing those as moot.

Henderson and Griffith are also sitting on panels considering House lawsuits for impeachment-related information. Henderson is one of the judges on the case for former White House counsel Don McGahn's testimony, while Griffith is weighing both the McGahn testimony case and the bid for grand jury information redacted from special counsel Robert Mueller's report.

Griffith, a former Senate legal counsel, questioned whether the House had standing to sue during oral arguments last month on both of the lawsuits.

The third judge on the panel, Tatel, last year wrote the D.C. Circuit's majority opinion upholding the House's subpoena for Trump's records from his accounting firm Mazars.

Friday's ruling may mark the end of a lawsuit that has now stretched into a third year. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled last year that the Democrats could go to court, and allowed discovery to begin.

But the Trump Justice Department sought an interlocutory appeal from the D.C. Circuit, after Sullivan dismissed its motion for him to review his prior rulings allowing for the case to move forward. And after a three-judge panel found that Sullivan had improperly dismissed that motion, he agreed to stay the case and allowed the D.C. Circuit to rule on the issue.

The Democrats' lawsuit is one of several currently winding through the courts on the Emoluments Clause.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit heard en banc arguments in December on a lawsuit from the attorneys general of Maryland and D.C. that alleged Trump profiting from his D.C. hotel while he's in office violates the Constitution.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit last year also revived another lawsuit from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and individual plaintiffs, also alleging that Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause.

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Read the D.C. Circuit decision in Blumenthal v. Trump:

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