D.C. Circuit: House challenge to Trump wall spending to proceed

Senior Judge David B. Sentelle
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has decided that the House of Representatives has standing to challenge the Trump administration's diversion of fund appropriated for other purposes to the construction of Trump's iconic wall on the Mexican Border.
The conservative Senior Circuit Judge David Sentelle, in House of Representatives v. Mnuchin concludes that "The ironclad constitutional rule is that the Executive Branch cannot spend until both the House and the Senate say so." - gwc

D.C. Circuit: House challenge to Trump wall spending to proceed
Sentelle, for the court
***To put it simply, the Appropriations Clause requires two keys to unlock the Treasury, and the House holds one of those keys. The Executive Branch has, in a word, snatched the House’s key out of its hands. That is the injury over which the House is suing. That injury—the snatched key—fits squarely within the Lujan mold because it is not a generalized interest in the power to legislate. Rather, the injury is concrete and particularized to the House and the House alone.
The alleged Executive Branch action cuts the House out of the appropriations process, rendering for naught its vote withholding the Executive’s desired border wall funding and carefully calibrating what type of border security investments could be made.
The injury, in other words, “zeroe[s] in” on the House. Arizona State Legislature, 576 U.S. at 802; see also I.N.S. v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 946 (1983) (“These provisions of Art. I are integral parts of the constitutional design for the separation of powers.”). Applying the “especially rigorous” standing analysis that the Supreme Court requires in cases like this, Arizona State Legislature, 576 U.S. at 803 n.12, reinforces the House’s injury in fact. To hold that the House is not injured or that courts cannot recognize that injury would rewrite the Appropriations Clause.
That Clause has long been understood to check the power of the Executive Branch by allowing it to expend funds only as specifically authorized. As then-Judge Kavanaugh wrote for this court, the Appropriations Clause is “a bulwark of the Constitution’s separation of powers among the three branches of the National Government,” and it “is particularly important as a restraint on Executive Branch officers.” U.S. Dep’t of Navy v. Fed. Lab. Rel. Auth., 665 F.3d 1339, 1347 (D.C. Cir. 2012).
The ironclad constitutional rule is that the Executive Branch cannot spend until both the House and the Senate say so. (emph. added. - gwc)