WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court introduced on Monday that it could determine whether or not particular person members of Congress are entitled to sue a authorities company for details about a Washington lodge as soon as owned by former President Donald J. Trump.

Days earlier than Mr. Trump left workplace, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that members of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, all Democrats and making up lower than a majority of the panel’s members, had standing to sue for entry to authorities paperwork regarding doable conflicts of curiosity on the Trump International Hotel.

An organization owned by Mr. Trump and his kids had leased the ability, as soon as generally known as the Old Post Office Building, in 2013. The lease mentioned that no “elected official of the government of the United States” shall “be admitted to any share or part of this lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.”

Critics mentioned Mr. Trump’s possession of the lodge whereas president raised a bunch of moral questions, a few of constitutional dimension. The Trump household sold the hotel last year, and it’s now working as a Waldorf Astoria.

A federal legislation enacted in 1928 empowers any seven members of the House oversight committee to acquire data from companies in its jurisdiction. In 2017, after having been repeatedly rebuffed by the General Services Administration for paperwork in regards to the lodge, Representative Elijah E. Cummings, then the committee’s rating member, together with 16 colleagues, issued a request underneath the 1928 legislation.

The company refused to conform, saying that “individual members of Congress, including ranking minority members, do not have the authority to conduct oversight.”

The lawmakers sued, and a trial choose dismissed the case on standing grounds.

Judge Patricia A. Millett, writing for almost all, mentioned the lawmakers had standing to sue.

“A rebuffed request for information to which the requester is statutorily entitled is a concrete, particularized and individualized personal injury,” she wrote, including, “The separation of powers, it must be remembered, is not a one-way street that runs to the aggrandizement of the executive branch.”

In dissent, Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg wrote that particular person members of Congress lacked standing to claim the institutional pursuits of the legislature.

The full D.C. Circuit, over the dissents of 4 judges, refused to rehear the case. The Biden administration, apparently placing institutional concerns over partisan pursuits, sought review from the Supreme Court.

“Our nation’s history makes clear,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote, “that an informational dispute between members of Congress and the executive branch is not of the sort traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial process.”

She added that “members of Congress have ample means, short of suing in federal court, for redressing official-capacity harms” like a denial of a request underneath the 1928 legislation.

“They may draw public attention to agency failures at oversight hearings, seek to persuade their colleagues to restrict agency budgets or take other measures, vote for bills that the president opposes, and vote against bills that the president supports,” Ms. Prelogar wrote.

In response, legal professionals for the lawmakers urged the justices to not hear the dispute, saying it was too idiosyncratic to warrant Supreme Court assessment. “This case is a legal unicorn,” they wrote.

The court docket agreed to listen to the case, Carnahan v. Maloney, No. 22-425, despite the fact that the variety of committee members concerned within the case has dropped to 5 after the death of Mr. Cummings in 2019, the departures of some members from the committee or from Congress, and different developments. Though the 1928 legislation refers to a minimal of seven members, neither facet argued that the case was moot.