The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the Trump administration does not have the authority to seize $2.5 billion from the Pentagon in order to fund the building of Trump’s border wall.
In a victory for environmental groups, the 2-1 ruling also upheld a federal district court order blocking illegal construction of the wall. Last summer, the Supreme Court had allowed construction of the wall to temporarily move forward while litigation in Sierra Club v. Trump proceeded.
The appeals court found that Trump's effort to divert funding that Congress had set aside for the military violated Congress' power of the purse under the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution.
“These funds were appropriated for other purposes, and the transfer amounted to ‘drawing funds from the Treasury without authorization by statute and thus violating the Appropriations Clause,’” the majority wrote. “Therefore, the transfer of funds here was unlawful.”
The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition. ACLU staff attorney Dror Ladin declared the ruling a victory for the rule of law. “President Trump’s xenophobic wall is already leveling protected lands, desecrating cultural sites, and destroying wildlife. There’s no undoing the damage that’s been done," Ladin said.
The ACLU press release noted that while the Supreme Court had not yet decided the ultimate outcome of the case, neither the district court nor the appeals panel had found the Trump administration's actions to be lawful or questioned the standing of the plaintiffs in the case.
In its ruling last year, the Supreme Court questioned whether the groups had a legal right to bring the case.