Earlier this week, The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling against the Biden Administration who was seeking to block border barrier construction using defense funding along the southern border.
The Daily Wire reports, “The Court ruled that a district court in California, where a federal judge had ruled against former President Trump’s use of Pentagon funds for the wall, should ‘consider what further proceedings are necessary and appropriate in light of the changed circumstances in this case.’”
As a result of Monday’s order, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit with instructions that the judges must vacate their own ruling.
The 9th Circuit Appeals Court initially let the ruling stand, arguing that the “budgetary transfers of funds for the construction of a wall on the southern border of the United States in California and New Mexico were not authorized under the Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2019.”
The Ninth Circuit used the environmental claims of the states of California and New Mexico in its June 2020 affirmation of the lower court’s ruling:
Concerning the injury in fact element of standing, the panel held that California and New Mexico alleged that the actions of the federal defendants will cause particularized and concrete injuries in fact to the environment and wildlife of their respective states as well as to their sovereign interests in enforcing their environmental laws. First, the panel held that California and New Mexico each provided sufficient evidence, if taken as true, that would allow a reasonable fact- finder to conclude that both states would suffer injuries in fact to their environmental interests, and in particular, to protect endangered species within their borders. Second, the panel also held that California and New Mexico demonstrated that border wall construction injured their quasi-sovereign interests by preventing them from enforcing their environmental laws.
“The Biden administration had argued that the Supreme Court did not need to weigh in on the border wall funding case because the project was closed down by the new administration,” Newsweek noted. It was not until April that the DOD reported that they were canceling the border barrier projects and reappropriating the money for “military missions and projects.”
