Supreme Court Denies Request To Stop Construction of the Southern Border Wall
The Supreme Court last week scuttled an attempt by environmentalists to stop construction of a section of President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico.
The court’s 5-4 ruling Friday allows construction of a section of wall in Arizona, New Mexico and California to continue even as lawsuits continue to make their way through the court system, according to CNN.
Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey B. Wall had argued against stopping construction, according to The Washington Post.
“A single decision from a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit, adopting reasoning that this court previously found wanting, is hardly the sort of intervening development that would warrant reconsidering a prior order of this court,” Wall wrote in a brief to the justices.
#SCOTUS declines to block Trump border wall construction https://t.co/ZisuWf4zjO @lawrencehurley pic.twitter.com/yVvKX8RBcW
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) July 31, 2020
As the Wall goes up, illegal crossings go down. This past week we built over 10 miles of Wall at our Southern Border. We now have 256 miles of NEW Wall and we are on track to have 300 miles completed by the end of August! pic.twitter.com/AWl0dYfY1w
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
Justice Stephen Breyer was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor in a dissent that implied the ruling was tantamount to a victory for Trump in the overall case.
“The Court’s decision to let construction continue nevertheless, I fear, may operate in effect, as a final judgment,” Breyer wrote.
The American Civil Liberties Union vowed to keep battling Trump’s wall.
“The fight continues,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, according to Fox News.
“Every lower court to consider the question has ruled President Trump’s border wall illegal, and the Supreme Court’s temporary order does not decide the case,” he said.
“We’ll be back before the Supreme Court soon to put a stop to Trump’s xenophobic border wall once and for all.”
However, in its reporting on the case, The New York Times said the groups may be disappointed.
“The Supreme Court’s earlier order was unsigned and only one paragraph long, but it indicated that the groups challenging the administration may not have a legal right to do so. That suggested that the court’s conservative majority was likely to side with the administration in the end,” The Times reported.
The White House was upbeat after the ruling, according to the New York Post.
“The Supreme Court reaffirmed today that it meant what it said a year ago: special interest groups likely lack any cause of action to sue the Department of Defense from transferring funds, and the Trump Administration should be allowed to build the wall and protect our country while litigation proceeds,” the White House said in a statement.
“Borders are a non-controversial reality of every sovereign nation, and we plan to defend ours,” the statement said.
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