In response to Trump’s executive order falsely claiming the White House has total power to dictate legal positions taken by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and other independent agencies, the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) have sued President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, the FEC, and its Commissioners in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  

DNC Chair Ken Martin, DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene and DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand released the following statement: 

“Americans are legally guaranteed fair elections with impartial referees – not a system where Donald Trump can dictate campaign rules he wants from the White House. Democrats will use every tool at our disposal, including aggressively confronting Trump’s illegal actions in the courts, to defend Americans’ right to free and fair elections which are the core of our country’s democracy.” 

Key points from the lawsuit: 

• “As applied to the Commission, Executive Order 14215 would eliminate [the Federal Election Campaign Act’s] requirement that the executive branch’s legal interpretations of FECA’s provisions reflect the bipartisan consensus of an expert multimember board and replace that bipartisan consensus with the judgment of a single partisan political figure—the President of the United States.”

• “The assertion is incompatible with nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court precedent blessing Congress’s authority to insulate certain agencies and officials from day-to-day control by the President.”

• “As the Supreme Court has held for 90 years […] Congress possesses the authority to insulate from presidential micromanagement agencies that are led by a multimember, bipartisan board that performs quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative functions—that is, agencies like the FEC.” 

• “Congress’s authority is especially true in this context, where the credibility of the entire regulatory enterprise would be fatally undermined if the party controlling the White House can unilaterally structure campaign rules and adjudicate disputes to disadvantage its electoral competitors.”

• “The Court should therefore certify the question of FECA’s constitutionality to the en banc D.C. Circuit under 52 U.S.C. § 30110, and then declare that FECA’s provisions shielding FEC decisionmaking from presidential coercion or control are constitutionally valid and enjoin the application of Section 7 of Executive Order 14215 to the Commission as inconsistent with those provisions.” 

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