Supreme Court allows Trump to spend $2.5 billion, build 100 miles of border barriers

A divided Supreme Court late Friday backed the Trump administration’s push to reshuffle up to $2.5 billion to build 100 miles of border barriers, a decision that allows the government to act ahead of a congressional spending fight that it said might have foiled those plans.

The high court ruling lifts a lower court injunction that prevented the government from spending the money —which was transferred into a Defense Department account earlier this year — to contract and build the barriers before fiscal 2019 spending law lapses on Sept. 30.

The Supreme Court majority, in a one-sentence description of its reasoning, wrote that the environmental groups challenging the reprogramming did not demonstrate that they had the legal right to challenge whether the government had complied with the law about such funding transfers.

The five conservative justices gave the government the backing it needed. Three liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, would have denied the government’s petition but did not write to say why.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote separately to say he would have partially lifted the injunction so that the government could continue contracting, but not build on lands the environmental groups say would be irreparably harmed.