A couple months back, before Donald Trump was formally inaugurated as President of the United States, I dismissed as a “pipe dream” the idea of successfully suing President Trump for violations of the U.S. Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause—which prohibits any United States officeholder from accepting any “emolument” from a foreign state without the consent of Congress—due to the Trump Organization’s business dealings with foreign governments. Was my dismissive take premature? We may find out soon: Earlier this week, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York raising this very claim, and asking the New York court to issue an order enjoining President Trump from continuing to violate the Clause.

I have a great deal of respect for CREW, and on the merits, I tend to think that Trump may well be in violation of the clause (though I don’t think it’s quite as obvious as the CREW brief and some other commentators have suggested, for reasons I might get into in a future post). But I continue to be skeptical that this suit has much chance of success, because I don’t think that the court will ever reach the merits of the claim. Rather, the case is likely to be dismissed before reaching the merits, for three reasons. Continue reading →