By Alex Pappas | Fox News
The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration on
Friday in lifting a freeze backed by a lower court that had
halted plans to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for border wall
construction.
The decision, which split the bench along ideological
lines, allows the administration to move ahead with plans to use military
funds to replace existing fencing in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
The conservative justices on the court ruled in favor of
the administration. Liberal justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Sonia Sotomayor dissented. And Justice Stephen Breyer issued a split
opinion, agreeing in part with both sides.
The president celebrated the ruling on Twitter:
"Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns
lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for
Border Security and the Rule of Law!"
-----
Wow! Big VICTORY on the
Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows
Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of
Law!
------
"We are pleased that the Supreme Court recognized
that the lower courts should not have halted construction of walls on the
southern border," Justice Department spokesperson Alexei Woltornist
said in a statement. "We will continue to vigorously defend the
Administration’s efforts to protect our Nation."
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which opposes
the funding for the wall, vowed to keep fighting.
“This is not over,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney
with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “We will be asking the federal
appeals court to expedite the ongoing appeals proceeding to halt
the irreversible and imminent damage from Trump's border wall. Border
communities, the environment, and our Constitution’s separation of powers will
be permanently harmed should Trump get away with pillaging military funds for a
xenophobic border wall Congress denied.”
The ruling means the Trump administration can tap
the funds and begin work covered by four contracts it has awarded.
A trial court initially froze the funds in May and an
appeals court kept that freeze in place earlier this month. The Trump
administration asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue.
Earlier this month, a divided three-judge panel of the
9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with a lower-court
ruling that prevented the government from tapping Defense Department
counterdrug money to build high-priority sections of the planned wall in the
three aforementioned states.
At stake is billions of dollars in funding that would
allow Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his
race for a second term.
Trump declared a national emergency after losing a
funding fight with the Democrat-led House that resulted in a 35-day
government shutdown. Congress agreed to spend nearly $1.4 billion on barriers
in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, an
amount well below the $5.7 billion the president had sought.
Trump grudgingly accepted the money but declared the
emergency in order to tap up to $8.1 billion for wall construction. That
amount includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5
billion from Defense Department counterdrug activities and $600 million from
the Treasury Department's asset forfeiture fund.
Fox News’ Shannon Bream and Bill Mears and
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Alex
Pappas is a politics reporter at FoxNews.com.
