The decision allows the Trump administration to redirect approximately $2.5bn approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the US-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding.
The Trump administration planned to use the $2.5bn on four contracts to replace existing sections of barrier in Arizona, California and New Mexico with more robust fencing.
The supreme court’s five conservative justices agreed to block a ruling in lower courts that barred Trump from spending the money on the wall contracts on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorize the funds to be used that way. The court’s four liberal justices wouldn’t have allowed construction to start.
The justices’ decision to lift the freeze on the money allows Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise. Trump celebrated the ruling on Twitter.
The lawsuit at the supreme court challenging the use of the defense department funds was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. The ACLU had argued that the Trump administration “lacks authority to spend taxpayer funds on a wall that Congress considered and denied”.
A trial court in Oakland, California, initially froze the funds in May, and an appeals court kept the freeze in place earlier this month.
The case the supreme court ruled on began after the 35-day partial government shutdown that started in December of last year. Trump ended the shutdown in February after Congress gave him approximately $1.4bn in border wall funding. But the amount was far less than the $5.7bn he was seeking, and Trump then declared a national emergency to take cash from other government accounts to use to construct sections of wall.
The money Trump identified includes $3.6bn from military construction funds, $2.5bn in defense department money and $600m from the Treasury department’s asset forfeiture fund.
The case before the supreme court involved just the $2.5bn in defense department funds, which the administration says will be used to construct more than 100 miles of fencing.
One project would replace 46 miles of barrier in New Mexico for $789m. Another would replace 63 miles in Arizona for $646m. The other two projects in California and Arizona are smaller.
The other funds were not at issue in the case.
The Treasury department funds have so far survived legal challenges, and Customs and Border Protection has earmarked the money for work in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley but has not yet awarded contracts. Transfer of the $3.6bn in military construction funds is waiting on approval from the defense secretary.
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