(FOX) - The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration on Friday in lifting a freeze backed by a lower court that had halted plans to use $2.5 billion in Pentagon funds for border wall construction.
The decision, which split the bench along ideological lines, allows the administration to move ahead with plans to use military funds to replace existing fencing in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
The conservative justices on the court ruled in favor of the administration. Liberal justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. And Justice Stephen Breyer issued a split opinion, agreeing in part with both sides.
The president celebrated the ruling on Twitter: "Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!"
A trial court initially froze the funds in May and an appeals court kept that freeze in place earlier this month. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue.
Earlier this month, a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with a lower-court ruling that prevented the government from tapping Defense Department counterdrug money to build high-priority sections of the planned wall in the three aforementioned states.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which opposes the funding for the wall, vowed to keep fighting.
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