The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the federal government to restart building border barriers in the Big Bend region of West Texas, including land inside Big Bend National Park. The order puts on hold a federal judge's injunction that had stopped the work last month while a lawsuit over the project moves ahead.

The ruling came in a brief unsigned opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone justice to say she would have turned the government down. She did not write anything to explain her vote.

At issue is a 1996 immigration law that lets the Homeland Security secretary set aside nearly any legal requirement to speed barrier building in places with heavy illegal crossings. Secretary Markwayne Mullin used that power this year for the Big Bend Sector, waiving environmental, historic preservation and conservation rules.

Why the court stepped in

That same law limits what judges can hear. Courts may consider only claims that the Constitution was violated. A judge in El Paso ruled on Oct. 2 that the challengers' argument fit that category because it rested on the major questions doctrine. The justices disagreed and said the government is very likely to win on that point, because the claim was really that the secretary went beyond the powers Congress gave him. In their view no such thing as a constitutional version of that doctrine exists.

The court added that the government's border security interests outweigh the scenic, recreational and environmental harm the challengers described. It said Congress plainly wanted barriers built quickly.

Who sued

The case was brought by a river guide, an environmental group and a nonprofit that cares for a historic church in the tiny border town of Ruidosa. They argue that 30-foot steel walls, patrol roads and surveillance gear would scar canyons, threaten wildlife and Native American sites and hurt a local economy that runs on tourism. One activist said Monday the order sends bulldozers back into the desert.

The plan, which covers more than 300 miles of barrier and roads, has drawn unusual pushback from people of all political stripes in Texas. The rugged Big Bend Sector covers more than a quarter of the southern border but routinely logs the fewest crossings of any Texas sector. Government lawyers countered that any gap would become a funnel for smugglers trying to avoid walls built elsewhere.