Supreme Court gives Trump a win, but doesn’t rule White House ballroom lawful
TheGrio...
The justices allowed construction to proceed after finding a preservation group likely lacked standing to sue.
The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a win Monday, clearing the way for construction to continue on the largest addition to the White House in decades.
The Washington Post reported that the ruling allows work to proceed on the ballroom project even as litigation over its legality continues. The court split 5-4, with the conservative majority, including all three Trump appointees, concluding that the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely lacks legal standing to challenge the construction. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in dissent.
The unsigned, eight-page order did not resolve whether the project itself is lawful, only whether the trust has the right to sue over it. The Trust’s case rested on a declaration from board member Alison Hoagland, a preservationist who said she regularly walks past the White House and would suffer aesthetic, cultural, and personal harm from a ballroom of the proposed scale.
Roberts pushed back sharply in dissent, writing that construction “has proceeded apace for the better part of a year” and that it is “likely unlawful,” adding pointedly that “the White House is not just any building.”
The proposed nearly 90,000-square-foot ballroom would sit on the site of the former East Wing, which Trump had demolished last fall. Court records indicate a 250-person crew has been working around the clock, 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
The administration has defended the project on national security grounds, arguing it will incorporate protective features, while also maintaining that private funding means it doesn’t require additional congressional approval.
The legal fight dates back to March, when a federal judge ruled the construction needed to pause absent congressional authorization. Monday’s decision follows an earlier administrative stay Roberts issued in August that kept work going while the full court weighed the case, and it now gives Trump the runway to substantially complete a project he has repeatedly described as central to his presidential legacy, even as the broader legal dispute remains unsettled and could return to the justices.