Another Federal Judge Spits in the Face of the Supreme Court

FILE - In this Jan. 4, 2016 photo, a U.S. Border Patrol agent drives near the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Santa Teresa, N.M. Can Donald Trump really make good on his promise to build a wall along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border to prevent illegal migration? What’s more, can he make Mexico pay for it? Sure, he can build it, but it’s not nearly as simple as he says. (AP Photo/Russell Contreras)

In this Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018, photo, Texas Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke, right, passes a “No Border Wall” sign during a visit to the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, a possible location for a border wall. O’Rourke is forsaking a safe seat in Congress and a rising-star career for the longest of odds in an attempt to unseat Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Rourke says that after Donald Trump was elected president, he decided he had to do more in politics than stay put in the House. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

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Stop me if you’ve seen this movie before.

Another federal judge has decided that Trump building a border wall through his emergency declaration is illegal. This came from Judge David Briones, a Clinton appointee (shocked face). His reasoning is as specious as the first judge that tried this.

Another federal judge ruled against President Trump’s use of a “national emergency” declaration to divert funds for the construction of a border wall on Friday, finding the use of an emergency proclamation “unlawful” because it violated a Congressional budgeting measure from January.

“The Congressional language in the [bill] reveals Congress’s intent to limit the border barrier funding,” wrote Judge David Briones, who was appointed to the federal District Court for the Western District of Texas by former President Bill Clinton.

There’s so much wrong when you drill down into this.

First, how does El Paso County and an activist group (who are the plaintiffs here) have standing to challenge federal agencies using federal funds on federal land? The simple answer is that there’s no legal reason they have standing. Yet, this judge decided they did based on the laughable notion that El Paso County would suffer “damage to their reputation.” By such a standard, anyone could have standing in any lawsuit against the federal government. It’s just ludicrous.

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The Supreme Court has already slapped down a judge earlier this summer for an equally ridiculous ruling, which bounced back and forth between the 9th Circuit originally. In it, the issue of standing came up, as it was yet another activist group doing the suing. The highest court has already ruled that Trump’s use of the emergency declaration is lawful and the gyrations of this judge don’t change that.

In the end, this will make its way up the chain and be overturned. But until Chief Justice John Roberts stops sitting on his hands, lower court judges will continue to spit in his face and gum up the judicial system with unsupported rulings such as this. Allowing this ruling to stand for even a day is an affront to our system. It’s not enough to let this spend months going through the system. The Supreme Court should immediately overrule this and then take away the ability for district court judges to make national injunctions.

Meanwhile, the wall keeps going up, whether these rogue judges like it or not.

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