The Supreme Court refused to suspend the building of parts of the border wall with Mexico by a 5-4 vote Friday after a previous lower court decision that the administration was misdirecting funds to the initiative.
After a federal court of appeals ruled in June that the president had unlawfully sidestepped Congress in moving funding to the Defense Department, the four moderate judges on the court dissented, stating they should have stopped development until a litigation case persists.
“The Court’s decision to let construction continue nevertheless I fear, may operate, in effect, as a final judgment,” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in a brief dissent for the four liberals.
Friday’s order indicates that the court is not really expected to address the content of the case until after the November referendum, though wall research proceeds.
Last summer, the courts have divided 5-4 on partisan lines at an earlier point in the case to enable the administration to launch building with $2.5 billion in funds from the Defense Department.
That helped President Donald Trump to make progress on a major campaign pledge for a second term going into his election in 2016. In New Mexico, Arizona and California, the government decided to use the money to repair a total of 129 miles (208 kilometers) of rusty or obsolete fencing.
As of mid-July, according to the US, 92 miles (1148 kilometers) were completed. Border and Customs Security.
Despite the previous court decision on appeals, the wall ‘s opponents went straight to the supreme court calling for the building to be suspended.
The Trump administration rejected the appeal and announced in August it would submit papers urging the Supreme Court to consider proceedings in the case.
The situation had its source in the unprecedented 35-day government closure that occurred in December 2018. Trump ended the shutdown after Congress gave him some $1.4 billion in funding for the border wall, but that was far less than the $5.7 billion he was seeking.
Trump then declared a national emergency that would take cash from other government accounts to be used to build wall sections.
The assets Trump listed at the time contained $2.5 billion in funding from the Defense Department, $3.6 billion from military building programs and $600 million from the asset seizure program from the Treasury Department.
The argument before the Supreme Court concerned a nominal $2.5 billion in funding from the Defense Department. The American Civil Liberties Union, which, on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Alliance, sued the Trump administration, has indicated it would try to take down parts of the wall constructed with the funding.
