The Tohono O’odham Nation joined an amicus brief supporting the cert petition in Defenders of Wildlife v. Chertoff (No. 07-1180) (amici-supporting-cert-petn-national-advocacy-center-et-al). The government has until May 18 to file a response. This is a potentially ground breaking case, given that the Department of Homeland Security has invoked a statute that allows the Department to ignore any law (especially environmental protection laws) that would delay the construction of the border fence (for analysis, see SCOTUSblog).

We’ve written about some aspects of this controversy earlier (here).