Supreme Court turns away border wall challenge from environmentalists

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Fox News chief legal correspondent Shannon Bream breaks down the ruling on 'America's Newsroom.'

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from a coalition of environmental groups that pushed back against the Trump administration's construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The groups, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, challenged a 1996 law giving the president authority to fight illegal immigration and border crossings, and limiting some legal challenges.

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The coalition claimed that the Trump administration did not conduct sufficient environmental impact studies for the construction and that endangered species like the jaguar and Mexican wolf would be adversely affected by the barrier.

They had asserted in their case that the law’s allowance for the secretary of Homeland Security to waive any laws necessary to allow the quick construction of border fencing violates the Constitution’s separation of powers. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had dismissed the case, citing a prior case from 2007 with "a nearly identical context."

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"This Court finds that precedent persuasive, and it compels the conclusion that Plaintiffs' complaint fails to state plausible constitutional claims as a matter of law," the Circuit Court's ruling said.

Fox News' Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.