Trump emolument cases tossed by Supreme Court
Issue ruled moot now that he’s out of office
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court batted aside a pair of cases Monday that raised questions about former President Donald Trump’s business ties, finding the concerns over whether he violated the Constitution’s anticorruption clauses moot now that he is out of office.
The cases involved questions about whether Trump violated the emoluments clauses of the Constitution by benefiting from his properties – notably, a hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. – where foreign and other entities with business before the federal government often stayed.
Trump’s critics argued that receiving revenue from those properties violated that prohibition.
The justices on Monday sent the cases back to lower courts and ordered that they be dismissed. Trump left office on Jan. 20, the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated.
The challenge with the cases – one brought by competitors to Trump properties and the other by the state of Maryland and Washington, D.C. – focused largely on who had standing to sue the president over the alleged violation of the clauses.
Democratic lawmakers and government watchdogs argued the most flagrant violations happened when government officials, including some from foreign governments, spent lavishly at the Trump International Hotel a few blocks from the White House.
Justice Department attorneys had
countered that a violation of the clauses only happens if Trump profits directly from his employment as president, not from “the proceeds of ordinary commercial transactions between foreign governments and businesses.”
Other cases
The court declined to take up an appeal by former Democratic New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who is serving a 61⁄2-year prison sentence after being convicted in a corruption case.
Silver was ousted as speaker in 2015 and was convicted later that year. His original conviction was overturned on appeal, but he was convicted again in 2018. Part of that conviction was then tossed out on another appeal, leading to yet another sentencing in July.
● The court ordered a further review
by a lower court of a lawsuit that was brought by a Texas death row inmate who objects to a policy that bars a chaplain from accompanying him into the death chamber.
The justices ordered Ruben Gutierrez’s case sent back to a federal trial-level court for additional proceedings. The justices in June had blocked Gutierrez’s execution after Texas changed its policy and barred all spiritual advisers from the death chamber.
Gutierrez’s attorneys argue his religious rights are being violated. The justices in June had asked a lower court to determine whether there would be “serious security problems” if Texas’ death row inmates were allowed to choose spiritual advisers to accompany them into the death chamber. The lower court said no.