Trump wins ruling in House\'s border wall suit

Trump wins ruling in House's border wall suit

IANS  |  Washington DC 

US ended a losing streak in court battles with the House when a rejected the Democrat-controlled chambers lawsuit seeking to stop him from using emergency powers to build a wall along the border with

McFadden decided that a single chamber of the legislature has no jurisdiction to sue the government for allegedly exceeding its powers.

The House of Representatives, headed by Nancy Pelosi, filed the lawsuit on its own as the has a Republican majority.

While the Constitution bestows upon Members of the House many powers, it does not grant them standing to drag the Branch into court claiming a dilution of Congress's legislative authority, MacFadden, a appointee, ruled.

The lawsuit's intention was to block the transfer of $1 billion from funds for the construction of the southwestern border wall, as ordered by Trump.

McFadden's decision comes after a in in late May did block the diversion of funds from both the and the Treasury Department to the construction of the wall.

Judge of the had ruled in favour of a coalition of 20 states -- mostly Democrat governed -- one environmental and a civil rights organisation which had sued the

The funds addressed in both lawsuits are those that Trump approved to divert after decreeing a national emergency on the southern border in February.

The approved $1.37 billion for the wall in its budgets, a figure far less than the $5.7 that Trump had requested, which led him to declare a national emergency with the aim of securing those funds without the approval of the legislature.

With the national emergency declared, the government re-allocated an additional $6.6 billion from the and the Treasury Department to fund the construction of some 376 km of border wall.

--IANS

in

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Tue, June 04 2019. 09:14 IST