Sierra Club, ACLU, SBCC Take Border Wall Fight to Supreme Court

WASHINGTON, DC— Today, the Sierra Club, American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Border Communities Coalition asked the Supreme Court to halt construction of President Trump’s border wall. In the motion, the groups urge the court to lift an earlier stay that allowed the Trump administration to divert $2.5 billion from military pay and pension funds for border wall construction that Congress explicitly denied. The Trump administration has continued building the border wall despite lower court orders blocking the construction and ruling it illegal.

“The Supreme Court must step in and stop the Trump administration’s unconstitutional border wall construction. Misusing military funds has resulted in construction projects that are destroying irreparable and sacred Tribal lands, decimating habitat and wildlife refuges, and forever scarring borderland communities. It is past time to halt this wasteful and irreversible damage,” said Gloria Smith, Managing Attorney at the Sierra Club.

“The Trump administration has lost in every lower court, but is still rushing to complete the president’s border wall before the Supreme Court can review the merits of this case. If the administration succeeds, there will be no border wall construction left to stop by the time the Supreme Court hears this case,” said Dror Ladin, staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “We’re asking the Supreme Court to join the lower courts and put a stop to the president’s destructive wall obsession before it’s too late.”

Background: 

Today’s motion comes in a lawsuit, Sierra Club v. Trump, filed by the ACLU on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. The groups are asking the Supreme Court to block the ongoing construction as the underlying case proceeds before the court. As the Sierra Club and SBCC long warned would happen, construction of President Trump’s border wall is desecrating ancestral and burial lands, destroying protected landscapes, and threatening wildlife.

In the case, the district court last year and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last month 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 last month 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, promising to complete the illegal construction by the end of 2020.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided the ultimate outcome of the case, and every lower federal court that has considered the issue has held that Trump’s border wall illegally trenches on Congress’s deliberate decision not to fund the construction. No court has suggested that the Sierra Club and the SBCC do not face real injuries from Trump’s actions.

The Trump administration maintains that no injured party — not the ACLU’s clients, not affected states, and not even Congress — can go to court to challenge the administration’s actions. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals forcefully rejected that argument last month, warning that “this is a rare case in which the judiciary may have to intervene in determining where the authority lies as between the democratic forces in our scheme of government.”  

The court concluded that Congress “declined to provide additional funding for projects in other areas, and it declined to provide the full $5.7 billion sought by the President: it is for the courts to enforce Congress’s priorities, and we do so here.”