October 19th, 2020: The Supreme Court will hear arguments in a challenge to the Trump administration’s diversion of $2.5 billion from military pay and pension funds for border wall construction that Congress explicitly denied. The order came in Sierra Club v. Trump, a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition.
A district court last year and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in June ruled that President Trump’s attempt to circumvent Congress and transfer $2.5 billion in military pay and pension funds for border wall construction is unlawful. The district court blocked the illegal wall construction, an order that the Ninth Circuit affirmed. However, because of an earlier Supreme Court stay on the district court’s order, the Trump administration has continued construction using funds unauthorized by Congress. Construction of President Trump’s border wall is desecrating ancestral and burial lands, destroying protected landscapes, and threatening wildlife.
“The Trump administration has misused military funds for the construction of a wall that has caused lasting harm to the ecosystems and communities of the borderlands, damaged sacred Indigenous lands beyond repair, and destroyed wildlife and habitats along the border,” said Gloria Smith, Sierra Club managing attorney. “Stopping this wasteful and irreversible damage is long overdue, and we look forward to making our case before the Supreme Court.”