Supreme Court takes case over Trump Hotel Records
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would decide whether individual members of Congress have the right to sue a government agency for information about a Washington hotel once owned by former President Donald J. Trump.
Days before Mr. Trump left office, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, all Democrats and those making up less than a majority of members of the panel had the right to access government documents regarding potential conflicts of interest at the Trump International Hotel.
A company owned by Mr. Trump and his children had leased the facility, once known as the Old Post Office Building, in 2013. or any part of this rental agreement, or any benefit that may result from it.”
Critics said Mr Trump’s ownership of the hotel while the president raised a host of ethical questions, some of a constitutional dimension. The Trump family sold the hotel last year and it now functions as a Waldorf Astoria.
A federal law enacted in 1928 authorizes seven members of the House oversight committee to seek information from agencies in its jurisdiction. In 2017, after being repeatedly rejected by the General Services Administration for documents related to the hotel, Representative Elijah E. Cummings, then the top member of the commission, along with 16 colleagues, filed a request under the law of 1928.
The bureau refused to comply, saying that “individual members of Congress, including senior minority members, do not have the authority to oversee.”
Lawmakers filed a lawsuit, and a trial judge dismissed the case on standing grounds.
Judge Patricia A. Millettwriting for the majority said lawmakers could sue.
“A rejected request for information to which the requester is legally entitled is a concrete, specific and individualized personal injury,” she wrote, adding: “The separation of powers, it must be remembered, is not a one-way street leading to the glorification of the executive.”
in dissent, Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg wrote that individual members of Congress were unable to defend the institutional interests of the legislature.
The entire D.C. Circuit, on four judges’ disagreements, refused to reconsider the case. The Biden administration, which apparently puts institutional considerations above partisan interests, requested a review by the Supreme Court.
“The history of our country makes it clear,” wrote Attorney General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, “that an information dispute between members of Congress and the executive branch is not of the sort traditionally thought to be resolved through judicial process .”
She added that “Members of Congress have sufficient resources, beyond suing in federal court, to repair damage to official capacity,” such as a denial of a request under the 1928 Act.
“They can draw public attention to agency failures in oversight hearings, try to persuade their peers to limit agency budgets or take other action, vote for bills the president opposes, and vote against bills the president supports wrote Ms Prelogar.
In answerlawmakers’ lawyers urged judges not to hear the dispute, saying it was too wayward to warrant Supreme Court review. “This case is a legal unicorn,” they wrote.
The court agreed to hear the case of Carnahan v. Maloney, No. 22-425, even though the number of committee members involved in the case has fallen to five after Mr. Cummings’ death in 2019, the departure of some members of the committee or of Congress, and other developments. Although the 1928 Act refers to a minimum of seven members, neither side argued that the matter was moot.