May 24, 2019: Late Friday afternoon, federal judge Haywood Gilliam stopped all border wall construction not directly funded by Congress pending resolution of our case. Sierra Club sued the Trump administration on grounds that the national emergency declaration was unconstitutional because in the 2019 budget, Congress expressly denied funding for border wall construction. After signing the budget, Trump declared a national emergency the very next day as an end run around congressional authority. The court held that Sierra Club had indeed shown that Trump violated the Constitution's separation of powers requirements: Trumps "massive redirection of funds under these circumstances likely would amount to an unbounded authorization for Defendants to rewrite the federal budget.”
The judge also held that Sierra Club's members have standing to bring this litigation in the first place because they fished, hiked in and photographed the southern border's varied and fragile desert ecosystems. Now that the judge has agreed that Sierra Club has a strong case on its merits, and we are the proper parties to bring this litigation, Sierra Club and ACLU will appear in court on June 5 to decide how the full case will proceed to resolution.