Supreme Court lets Big Bend border wall construction resume
Only one justice dissented. Work in Texas, across from Coahuila and Chihuahua, can restart while the fight over environmental waivers continues.
The Supreme Court on Monday put on holdPDF a federal judge's order that had stopped construction of the border wall in the Big Bend Sector of West Texas. The stretch faces the Mexican states of Coahuila and Chihuahua across the Rio Grande, which Mexicans call the Río Bravo.
The unsigned order, in Mullin v. Friends of the Ruidosa Church, drew one noted dissent: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the Trump administration's request.
On Oct. 2, a judge in El Paso had issued an injunction blocking the environmental waivers the administration used to speed construction, and with them all related work. A 1996 immigration law lets the homeland security secretary waive any legal requirement he deems necessary to build barriers quickly, and it limits courts to hearing constitutional claims.
That limit decided the case. A river guide, an environmental group and a nonprofit that preserves a historic church in Ruidosa, Texas, had sued under the major questions doctrine, arguing the administration overstepped its authority. The justices said that however it is labeled, the claim is about the limits of a statute, not the Constitution.
There is no such thing as a "constitutional" major-questions claim.
On that logic, the Court said the government is "exceedingly likely to prevail" on its argument that the judge lacked jurisdiction. It also weighed a statement from a Customs and Border Protection official that the halt costs the government nearly half a million dollars a day, and Congress's "clear preference for expeditious border construction" over the environmental and recreational harm the plaintiffs describe.
The order sets no date for work to resume. Because the law lets only constitutional claims into district court, the ruling makes it harder to challenge the administration's waivers in those courts at any other stretch of the border.
The stay lasts while the government files its petition for review and the Court rules on it. If the Court denies the petition, the stay ends on its own; if it takes the case, the stay lasts until the judgment is issued.
