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The Supreme Court’s Short But Incredibly Confusing Ruling Clearing The Way For Trump To Grab Money And Start Building His Wall
*Or: Why is it the Sierra Club that’s suing about this?
We preface this as always when we write about legal issues that none of us are lawyers.
But this seems to be one of those cases that really defies common sense.
The Supreme Court’s ruling itself in Trump v. Sierra Club, which came very late last week, is a concise one paragraph (lengthened to three pages by an explanation by Justice Breyer explaining how he would’ve handled it differently). It was decided by a margin of 5–4 (usual suspects), without any Justice taking credit for the opinion (which is not usual for this kind of action). The most crucial bit is this:
“[T]he Government has made a sufficient showing at this stage that the plaintiffs have no cause of action.”
That lifts injunctions placed by lower courts preventing Trump from taking $2.5-billion from the U.S. military to build his wall, after he declared he has to because it’s a “National Emergency”, even though Congress doesn’t agree and refused to fund it. Now he can go ahead and start building.
