Thread by @jadler1969

The DC Circuit tossed the Emoluments Clause lawsuit filed by members of Congress. This should be no surprise. It was always the weakest of the emoluments cases. (more tweets to follows)

The panel (correctly) concluded the members of Congress lack standing.
An early report is here: law.com/nationallawjou…

It's a short, per curiam opinion joined by Judges Henderson, Griffith, and Tatel. Again, no surprise. The standing case here was always exceedingly weak.

"This case is really no different from Raines. The Members
were not singled out—their alleged injury is shared by the 320 members of the Congress who did not join the lawsuit—and their claim is based entirely on the loss of political power."

After Raines and Bethune-Hill, only an institution can assert an institutional injury provided the injury is not “wholly abstract and widely dispersed.”

Our standing inquiry is “especially rigorous” in a case like
this, where “reaching the merits of the dispute would force us to decide whether an action taken by one of the other two branches of the Federal Government was unconstitutional.”

"The Constitution permits the Judiciary to speak only in the context of an Article III case or controversy and this lawsuit presents neither."
Case dismissed. (IOW, the district court's substantive conclusions on meaning of Emoluments are now gone.)

If SCOTUS takes this case, it's most likely only in conjunction with one of the other emoluments cases (from CA2 and CA4). This one, by itself, does not present a cert worthy question, as the law is quite clear. /Fin

And the opinion is now posted on the CADC site: cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opini…