## Facts

- Congress appropriated $1.375 billion for limited border “fencing” and declined to provide the President’s requested $5.7 billion.
- The President declared a national emergency and directed the executive branch to pursue additional border-barrier construction using other funding sources.
- The Department of Defense transferred approximately $2.5 billion under § 8005 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act to support Department of Homeland Security border-barrier projects under 10 U.S.C. § 284.
- Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition alleged the construction would damage habitat, impede wildlife movement, and impair members’ recreational and aesthetic use of affected lands in California, New Mexico, and Arizona.
- The district court entered a permanent injunction barring use of the transferred funds for specified border-barrier segments.
- The Supreme Court stayed the injunction pending appeal, and later (after a change in presidential administration and termination of the emergency) vacated the Ninth Circuit’s judgment and remanded for further proceedings in light of changed circumstances.

## Issues

1. Whether the plaintiffs had Article III standing and a cognizable basis to seek equitable relief against allegedly unauthorized expenditures absent an express statutory cause of action.
2. Whether the Department of Defense lawfully transferred funds under § 8005 for border-barrier construction requested under 10 U.S.C. § 284, including whether the project satisfied § 8005’s prerequisites.
3. Whether the transfers and expenditures unlawfully circumvented Congress’s appropriations decisions under the Appropriations Clause.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit (2-1) affirmed the permanent injunction.
- The majority held the plaintiffs had standing based on members’ concrete environmental, recreational, and aesthetic injuries traceable to the challenged construction and redressable by an injunction.
- The majority held plaintiffs could seek injunctive relief under federal courts’ equitable powers to restrain ultra vires executive spending, without relying on a statutorily created cause of action.
- The majority concluded the transfer violated § 8005 because the border-barrier funding was not based on “unforeseen military requirements” and involved an “item” Congress had effectively denied by rejecting the requested level of funding and imposing constraints.
- The court reasoned that spending transferred funds contrary to Congress’s funding choices implicated the Appropriations Clause’s requirement that Treasury funds be drawn only in consequence of appropriations made by law.
- The dissent argued plaintiffs lacked a proper cause of action to enforce § 8005, challenged the majority’s reading of § 8005’s limits, and urged greater restraint in reviewing budgetary and military determinations.
- The Supreme Court later vacated the Ninth Circuit judgment and remanded due to changed circumstances, eliminating the decision’s binding effect.

## Legal Principles

- Federal courts may grant non-statutory equitable relief to restrain executive action alleged to be ultra vires, including allegedly unauthorized expenditure of public funds, even when no statute expressly creates a cause of action.
- Organizational plaintiffs may establish standing through members’ concrete environmental, recreational, or aesthetic injuries that are fairly traceable to challenged governmental action and likely to be redressed by injunctive relief.
- Transfer authority conditioned on “unforeseen military requirements” does not authorize spending for a long-sought, politically contested project that was foreseeable and repeatedly presented to Congress.
- Statutory limits barring transfers for an “item” denied by Congress may be triggered where Congress considered and rejected the requested level of funding and instead enacted a narrower appropriation with restrictions.
- The Appropriations Clause functions as a structural constraint: executive branch expenditures must remain within congressional authorizations and cannot use transfer mechanisms to obtain funding Congress refused to provide.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction blocking use of transferred defense funds for border-barrier construction, finding equitable review available, standing satisfied, and the transfers unauthorized under § 8005 and inconsistent with Congress’s appropriations choices; the Supreme Court later vacated the judgment after changed circumstances mooted the dispute.


Sierra Club v. Trump, 963 F.3d 874 (9th Cir. 2020)