Trump Border Wall Construction Kept on Hold by Appeals Court

(Bloomberg) -- A federal appeals court kept in place a judge's ruling barring the Trump administration from moving ahead with construction projects for a southern U.S. border wall using funds not approved by Congress.

The order issued Wednesday by a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based court was in response to an administration request for permission to begin the process of spending $1 billion from the Defense Department for border wall construction in Arizona and New Mexico while the court fight continues.

President Donald Trump, who campaigned in 2016 on a promise to build a wall, is expected to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The president initially sought $5.6 billion for the wall but Democrats in Congress refused, sparking a 35-day partial government shutdown. After Congress authorized $1.38 billion for border security, Trump declared a national emergency on Feb. 15 -- citing a surge in attempted crossings by immigrants -- and said he would get the funding he needed elsewhere.

A judge in Oakland, California, issued an order in May that temporarily blocked a pair of border construction projects in New Mexico and Arizona. On June 28, U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam expanded the injunction to cover four more projects, and he also made the order permanent.

In Wednesday's ruling, two of the appeals court judges concluded the president's action violates Congress's constitutional authority to spend taxpayer money. They also said that upholding Gilliam's decision to halt construction won't significantly alter conditions at the southern border, where immigration authorities say resources are strained by a surge of Central Americans seeking to enter the U.S.

U.S. Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith wrote a dissenting opinion.

“The majority here takes an uncharted and risky approach -- turning every question of whether an executive officer exceeded a statutory grant of power into a constitutional issue,” wrote Smith. “We have no right to expand the judiciary's role in this matter.”

The lower-court cases are Sierra Club v. Trump, 19-cv-00892, and California v. Trump, 19-cv-00972, both in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).

To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in San Francisco at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg, Peter Jeffrey

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