Supreme Court lifts block on Big Bend border wall construction lawsuit

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a key win on its emergency docket on Monday by lifting a lower court’s block on border wall construction in the Big Bend region of Texas.U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, had blocked three waivers issued by the Department of Homeland Security last month that allowed for border wall construction, siding with environmental activists who sued to halt construction in the region. That led the Trump administration to ask the high court to block the ruling.The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of lifting the lower court’s injunction, with only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson saying she would have denied the Trump administration’s emergency petition. The per curiam ruling found that the administration was “exceedingly likely to prevail” on its claims that the federal district court overstepped its authority by blocking border construction in the Big Bend region. “To start, the District Court’s order, which bars the Secretary from exercising his statutory authority to waive applicable laws as he ‘determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction’ of border barriers under [the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996], delays the Government’s construction of border barriers and roads in the Big Bend Sector,” the unsigned per curiam ruling said. “The injunction thus impedes the Government from advancing its ‘compelling interests’ in border security and integrity.”Jackson did not elaborate on why she would not grant the administration’s request to lift the injunction. The ruling allows construction in the region, including in Big Bend National Park, to move forward.Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the emergency petition to the high court last month to lift the “baseless injunction that halts a major portion of the construction of the border wall,” and he urged the justices to overrule the “both unlawful and unprecedented” ruling, which was the first time a court attempted to override DHS’s waiver for border wall construction.“The court illogically concluded that respondents’ aesthetic and recreational harms ‘outweigh’ the government’s extraordinarily strong border-security and operational interests in ensuring that 25% of the U.S.-Mexico border has adequate protective barriers,” Sauer wrote in his emergency petition. “The notion that respondents’ interest in ‘escap[ing] from modern life’ in the ‘wild spaces in the Big Bend Sector’ and preserving ‘the spiritual, recreational, and aesthetic value of the area,’ surpasses the United States’ paramount interest in preventing a quarter of the border from becoming a magnet for cartel exploitation defies credulity.”SUPREME COURT APPEARS POISED TO HAND COLORADO MAJOR LOSS IN RELIGIOUS PRESCHOOL CASEThe majority on the Supreme Court agreed with Sauer’s reasoning, saying in the Monday order that “the Government’s interest therefore outweighs any aesthetic, recreational, and environmental harm alleged by respondents.”The Supreme Court’s Monday ruling marks the latest win for the Trump administration on the high court’s emergency docket, adding to the administration’s overwhelmingly positive record there. The administration has also had a nearly perfect record on immigration cases taken up by the Supreme Court on its merits docket since President Donald Trump returned to the White House early last year.