The District of Columbia and Maryland have sued President Trump to stop him from violating the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses—one of three emoluments-related lawsuits pending against the President. On Tuesday, we and 18 other law professors submitted an amicus brief in federal district court arguing that the District of Columbia and Maryland have standing to pursue their constitutional claims. As we explain in the brief, the plaintiffs’ claims are cognizable both under the Supreme Court’s competitor standing doctrine and under a line of cases holding that states have standing to enforce constitutional provisions that protect their opportunity to influence national governance.

The brief, filed with the federal district court in Maryland by our counsel Gina Kline and Jean Zachariasiewicz of the law firm Brown Goldstein & Levy, LLP, focuses specifically on the threshold questions in the case: whether the District of Columbia and Maryland meet the requirements for Article III standing, whether they have a cause of action under the Emoluments Clauses, and whether their claims fall within the “zone of interests” that those clauses protect. We think that the answer to all those questions is clearly “yes.” (While our brief doesn’t address the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims, several other amicus briefs do—including one filed by Take Care co-blogger Jed Shugerman and a group of legal historians.)

On competitor standing, the plaintiffs have 45 years of Supreme Court case law going for them. It is well settled that a plaintiff with a proprietary interest in a business enterprise has standing to challenge actions by government officials that provide an illegal advantage to a direct competitor. Courts have defined the scope of competitor standing according to the “same arena” test: Does the plaintiff “compete[] in the same arena” with the party that has allegedly received an illegal benefit? The District of Columbia and Maryland both do.

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