Supreme Court ruling lets Trump divert military funds to build part of border wall.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday handed President Trump a major victory by clearing the way for him to divert $2.5 billion from the military’s budget and use it to build an extra 100 miles of border wall in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
The justices, by a vote of 54, lifted orders by a federal judge in Oakland and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that had barred the administration from using the Pentagon’s money to build a border wall.
Conservative justices questioned whether the environmental groups challenging Trump’s wall had standing. The court’s four liberal justices dissented.
Trump’s lawyers had asked the high court to intervene, saying it faced a Sept. 30 deadline to spend $2.5 billion from the Pentagon’s budget before the fiscal year ended and the money was no longer available.
Lower courts had said Trump’s move to divert the money was an end run around Congress, which had specifically refused to allocate money for a wall.
“The Constitution assigns to Congress the power of the purse,” the 9th Circuit said July 3 in upholding the injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. “It is Congress that is to make decisions regarding how to spend taxpayer dollars.”
That was a reference to the deadlock between the president and Congress over the border wall. It led to a 35day partial government shutdown which ended in February with a budget deal that included only $1.4 billion for border security, but nothing for a wall. It was well short of the $5.7 billion Trump had sought for a wall.
After signing the deal, the president declared a national emergency and said he had the authority to transfer already appropriated funds to extend the border wall.
Lawyers for the Sierra Club, the Southern Border Communities Coalition and the ACLU sued, arguing that construction of a 30foothigh wall would harm wildlife and damage the environment in remote areas.
And while the lawsuits failed Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives had fared no better.
A lawsuit by the Democraticcontrolled House to challenge the $2.5 billion appropriation was dismissed in June by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden of Washington, D.C. McFadden, a Trump appointee, said the House, despite its power over federal spending, lacks authority to “conscript the Judiciary in a political turf war with the President.” Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko
contributed to this report.