Trump's National Emergency Just Got Its First Legal Challenge

Trump's National Emergency Just Got Its First Legal Challenge

Legal advocacy group Public Citizen filed suit on behalf of landowners in Texas and an environmental group. More lawsuits are expected.


https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/first-lawsuit-challenging-trump-national-emergency-border-wa

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WASHINGTON – A consumer advocacy group filed the first lawsuit late Friday challenging President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration, suing on behalf of Texas landowners and an environmental group who say they'll be affected by border wall construction. The case, filed by Public Citizen in federal district court in Washington, DC, is the first of what are expected to be multiple lawsuits challenging Trump's unprecedented decision to declare a national emergency in order to access $3.6 billion in military construction funds to pay for more sections of the wall he promised to build along the US–Mexico border.


Trump announced the national emergency on Friday in a Rose Garden ceremony. In order to fund wall construction, the administration is also reprogramming $2.5 billion in money marked for Department of Defense counternarcotics efforts and tapping $600 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund; neither move requires a national emergency. Combined with the $1.375 billion appropriated by Congress, the administration is set to have access to approximately $8 billion for the wall this year.

Public Citizen is arguing the president exceeded his authority under the federal National Emergencies Act because there is no emergency at the southern border, and that his declaration of a national emergency in order to build the wall violates the separation of powers — essentially, that it's unconstitutional for Trump to declare an emergency because Congress already refused to appropriate the money.

"Rather than responding to an emergency requiring immediate action, the Declaration seeks to address a long-running disagreement between the President and Congress about whether to build a wall along the southwestern border and Congress’s refusal to appropriate funds for that purpose," Public Citizen's lawyers wrote in the lawsuit. "However, under our Constitution, built on the principle of separation of powers, a disagreement between the President and Congress about how to spend money does not constitute an emergency authorizing unilateral executive action."


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