A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of Texas, allowing the state to maintain a series of buoys in the Rio Grande that were installed by order of Governor Greg Abbott. The decision comes after the Biden-Harris administration filed a lawsuit against Texas, seeking to have the barriers removed.
The controversy began over a year ago, when contractors started placing the floating buoys in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas. The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Justice quickly responded with a lawsuit, arguing that the barriers were installed without the necessary approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and posed a hazard to navigation on the river.
In a letter to Governor Abbott, Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim and U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas Jaime Esparza claimed that the buoy barrier was in violation of the Rivers and Harbors Act. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has now overturned a lower court’s preliminary injunction, ruling that the district court “clearly erred” in its findings.
The appeals court’s majority opinion stated, “We cannot square the district court’s findings and conclusions with over a century’s worth of precedent.” The decision reverses an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel, which had upheld the lower court’s ruling.
The case will now return to the lower court in the Western District of Texas, where a trial is scheduled to take place on August 6 in Austin, Texas. Governor Abbott has taken to social media to celebrate the ruling, stating, “Biden tried to remove them. I fought to keep them in the water. That is exactly where they will stay.”
