| Thompson v. Trump | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Court | United States District Court for the District of Columbia |
| Full case name | Bennie G. Thompson, et al v.Donald J. Trump et al |
| Citation | No. 1:21-cv-00400 |
| Court membership | |
| Judge sitting | Amit Mehta |
Thompson v. Trump is an ongoing federal civil case filed in February 2021 on behalf ofU. S. House of RepresentativesBennie Thompson against current U.S. presidentDonald Trump. The lawsuit accused Trump and others conspired toincite theJanuary 6 United States Capitol attack. In February 2022,District of Columbia U.S. District Court JudgeAmit Mehta ruled thatpresidential immunity did not shield Trump from the lawsuit. In March 2022, Trump appealed Mehta's ruling to theU.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals. In December 2023, the Court of Appeals upheld Mehta's ruling against Trump.
On February 16, 2021, theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed a lawsuit on behalf ofU. S. House of RepresentativesBennie Thompson against former PresidentDonald Trump,Rudolph Giuliani, theProud Boys and theOath Keepers.[1] The lawsuit centered around the 1871Ku Klux Klan Act, designed to protect members of Congress from violent conspiracies that interfere with their official Congressional duties.[2] In an interview withThe Guardian, NAACP PresidentDerrick Johnson stated that the "former administration and Giuliani sought to disqualify our votes" and accused Trump of "operating under a white supremacist doctrine that was a derived [sic] from days of the Confederacy".[3]
On April 7, 2021, ten more Representatives joined the suit as plaintiffs. They wereSteve Cohen,Karen Bass,Bonnie Watson Coleman,Veronica Escobar,Hank Johnson,Marcy Kaptur,Barbara Lee,Jerry Nadler,Pramila Jayapal, andMaxine Waters.[4] In July 2021, Thompson withdrew from the suit to avoid any conflict with chairing theHouse Select Committee investigating the attack, while the other plaintiffs, who were not on the Committee, decided to moved forward.[5]
Judge Mehta consolidatedThompson v. Trump with two other suits before him—Swalwell v. Trump (brought by RepresentativeEric Swalwell) andBlassingame v. Trump (brought by twoU.S. Capitol Police officers)—to consider whether Trump and the other defendants were immune from liability. The defendants had requested immunity on the grounds of theFirst Amendment, and those who were elected officials also claimed immunity based on that status. Mehta ruled in February 2022 that presidential immunity did not shield Trump from the lawsuits.[6] Trump then appealed the consolidated cases to theDistrict of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2022, claiming absolute immunity.[7][8][5]
In December 2023, the Court of Appeals (with judgesGregory G. Katsas,Judith W. Rogers, andSri Srinivasan presiding) upheld Mehta's ruling that presidential immunity did not shield Trump from the lawsuits because the lawsuits alleged that Trump was acting "as an office-seeker not office-holder" due to his speech on January 6 being a campaign event, and as such, did not clearly fall within the "outer perimeter" standard established inNixon v. Fitzgerald (1982).[9][10][5]