The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a case that was scheduled to hear whether Democratic lawmakers should have been able to sue to obtain documents related to a Washington hotel former President Donald Trump owned during his presidency.
The judges struck down a federal appeals court ruling that had allowed a lawsuit by Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee to proceed over the Trump administration’s refusal to turn over rental information by the Trump Organization. from the hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House and the Capitol, reported the agency AP.
The court’s decision had been requested by Biden’s Justice Department, which feared the appeals court ruling would lead to a spate of lawsuits from individual members of Congress against the administration.
Donald Trump’s family no longer owns the hotel, now a Waldorf Astoria, and much of the information lawmakers sought was eventually provided. The only documents in question were internal legal opinions.
Judges intervened in the case last month, at the behest of the Biden administration.
The Justice Department had argued that it was important to erase the appeal ruling from the books so as not to encourage many other lawmakers to sue this or future administrations in a similar way.
Members of Congress cannot normally go to federal courts individually or in small groups and claim that their status as legislators entitles them to sue when the administration in office refuses to honor their requests for information.
But a 95-year-old law allows any seven members of the House Oversight Committee or five senators from that body’s similar committee to request and receive certain information from federal agencies.
In years past, the United States Supreme Court had already thrown out lawsuits accusing Donald Trump of unduly enrich himself during his tenureunder the argument that the matter is now irrelevant because he is no longer president.
The lawsuits demanded the release of records showing money spent by foreign and local governments for their officials to make use of Trump-owned hotels and restaurants.
The cases had been brought by the State of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and several hotels and restaurants in the New York and Washington DC area that were, they claimed, “in the unfortunate position of having to compete with businesses that They are owned by the President of the United States.
