Top US legal rights group ACLU files lawsuit challenging Trump emergency - Court Documents
Washington, Feb 20 (Sputnik) Lawyers from the same legal rights group that took the fight against the US travel ban all the way to the Supreme Court filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency to fund building a wall on the southern border, court documents revealed.
"We just filed our lawsuit challenging President Trump's national emergency declaration to secure funds for a border wall," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a twitter post on Tuesday that was linked to court documents.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in the Northern District of California on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, according to the court documents.
"The lawsuit argues the president’s declaration and diversion of funds violates core constitutional principles and multiple laws and statutes, including... the constitutional principle of separation of powers because it usurps Congress’s power over spending and ignores Congress’s decision to provide only limited funding for construction of a wall along the US-Mexico border," the ACLU said in a statement accompanying the court documents.
The documents also reveal that the lawsuit requests that the court declare that the US Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and the Treasury have violated the National Environmental Policy (NEPA) Act by failing to conduct any NEPA analysis on the potential environmental impacts of the border wall project.
Last week, Trump signed a national emergency declaration to free up $8 billion in US federal funds to install 234 miles’ worth of steel barriers along the country’s 1,950-mile border with Mexico. The US president acknowledged he was likely to be sued for declaring the national emergency, adding that he would be successful in the US Supreme Court.
Image Credit: Donald Trump Facebook page
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