Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued her own unique opinion on the Supreme Court's decision in the case concerning records related to a hotel once owned by former President Donald Trump.
On Monday, the court announced that it was tossing a case about whether Democratic lawmakers should be able to sue a government agency for documents related to Trump's then-owned hotel in Washington, D.C. Both sides had asked the justices to dismiss the lawsuit after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
While all nine of the Supreme Court justices agreed that the case should be dropped, Jackson dissented on the way that the case was tossed out, saying that she would have done so using a different procedural mechanism.
Monday's order vacated the D.C. Circuit Court's decision, sending the case back to the lower court with instructions to dismiss the case. Although Jackson agreed the case should be dismissed, she wanted to allow the circuit court's decision to stand, Alex Badas, a political scientist specializing in judicial politics, explained.
"[Jackson's opinion] would make it a binding precedent for future cases that come up in the D.C. Circuit," Badas told Newsweek.
The case had raised questions about whether individual congressional lawmakers should be able to demand executive branch documents, without support from a full committee, under a federal law known as the "Seven Member Rule." The checks-and-balances rule, which is seldom used, allows any seven members of House or Senate oversight committees to ask for documents from executive agencies.
The dispute had arisen after members of the House committee's Democratic minority sought financial records related to Trump's hotel over concerns that there was a potential conflict of interest between Trump as president and Trump as the founder of the Trump Organization, which operated his properties throughout his administration.
The General Services Admission, which leased the building that Trump converted into a hotel, refused to hand over documents related to the bidding process. However, Democratic lawmakers obtained many of the documents through other means.
Badas said that because the lower courts had ruled in favor of the congressional lawmakers, letting that decision stand would have "made it easier for a minority of congressional committees to try to receive documents from the executive branch" in future cases.
"By vacating the decision and instructing the D.C. Circuit Court to dismiss the case, it will be as if the case never happened, and it will not be a precedent in future cases," he said.
Democrats had voluntarily agreed that the case should be abandoned by the Supreme Court.
Several of the former lawmakers who originally filed the suit have either died or left Congress, and last year, the Trump Organization completed the sale of the hotel to CGI Merchant Group and its partner Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., which now operates the property as a Waldorf Astoria hotel.
