William S. Consovoy, partner with Consovoy McCarthy. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM)

President Donald Trump and his campaign committee filed suit in federal court Tuesday to block California’s new law requiring presidential candidates to release their tax filings.

The lawsuit is no surprise, as the president’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said shortly after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the tax legislation into law on July 30 that the measure “will be answered in court.”

“In passing the law, Governor Newsom and the Democrats in the California legislature who voted for it made clear that they were retaliating against President Trump for his political associations and speech,” Bryan Weir, an associate at the Arlington, Virginia, litigation boutique Consovoy McCarthy, wrote in the 15-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for California’s Eastern District in Sacramento.

Weir is joined on the complaint by Consovoy McCarthy attorneys Thomas McCarthy, William Consovoy and Cameron Norris.

The Consovoy McCarthy firm is leading Trump’s cases in Washington and New York courts to argue in defense of continued secrecy of his financial information. The firm recently sued the House Ways and Means Committee to block any effort to acquire Trump’s New York state tax returns, and the firm is defending Trump in a House suit demanding the U.S. Treasury Department and IRS furnish copies of his federal returns. Trump is also trying to overturn two federal trial court rulings that said House committees could enforce subpoenas against his accounting firm and longtime lender, Deutsche Bank.

Separately, the California Republican Party and the Republican National sued California officials on Tuesday to obtain an injunction blocking the new law. Harmeet Dhillon of San Francisco’s Dhillon Law Group and a team from Washington’s Michael Best & Friedrich represent the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs team includes former Trump White House lawyer Stefan Passantino.

Tuesday’s suit from Trump alleged violations of federal election laws and the First Amendment. The complaint also said California’s law is preempted by the federal Ethics in Government Act, which sets rules requiring presidential candidates to disclose certain financial information.

“Ultimately, the Democrats lost this political fight in the 2016 election,” Weir wrote in the complaint. “Voters heard the political attacks from Secretary Clinton and others, and they elected President Trump anyway. Democrats across the country, however, have only become more eager to obtain the President’s tax returns for political gain.”

Though the law requires tax disclosures from both presidential and gubernatorial campaigns, it was clearly aimed at Trump, who has refused to make public his returns. Trump has said he will not do so because he is being audited. Trump was the first president in modern times to refuse to show his tax returns to voters.

“These are extraordinary times and states have a legal and moral duty to do everything in their power to ensure leaders seeking the highest offices meet minimal standards, and to restore public confidence,” Newsom said in a signing statement. “The disclosure required by this bill will shed light on conflicts of interest, self-dealing, or influence from domestic and foreign business interest.”

Several prominent law scholars and litigators backed the new California law, saying in a statement issued by the governor’s office that the provision doesn’t stop any candidate from appearing on the ballot.

Boies Schiller Flexner chairman David Boies, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Boutrous Jr., and UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who have each publicly criticized the president’s policies, supplied short opinions asserting the constitutionality of the new law.

“No other constitutional provision is implicated or violated by a state’s requirement that a Presidential candidate disclose tax returns,” Boies said in the statement. “Moreover, California, which permits electors to be chosen by popular vote, has an important interest in ensuring that its voters are informed.”

Another law school professor, Daniel Hemel, writing at The Washington Post recently, predicted the new law faced hurdles.

“The obstacles to the law’s effectiveness are both legal and practical. Courts may well strike down the law on constitutional grounds. But even if the law passes constitutional muster (a big ‘if’), it lacks the teeth to make Trump comply,” wrote Hemel, an assistant professor of law at the University of Chicago.

The courts, Hemel said, “will have to weigh the state’s interest in election integrity against Trump’s interest in appearing on the ballot, his California supporters’ interest in being able to vote for their preferred candidate and the Republican Party’s interest in deciding how its nominee is selected.” He added: “How any given court will come down is anyone’s guess.”

The new complaint is posted below:

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Boies, Boutrous and Chemerinsky Back California’s Squeeze on Trump’s Tax Returns