A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed construction to continue on President Trump’s luxury White House ballroom, which has been steadily rising to replace the East Wing the president tore down last fall.
In a 5-to-4 vote, the court said the preservationists who challenged the construction of the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom did not have legal grounds known as standing to bring their lawsuit because they were not directly harmed by the project, estimated to cost $400 million.
The majority emphasized that its order was not addressing the legality of the project and instead the question of who could sue to try to block it. But in practical terms, the order was a significant setback to the most serious legal challenge to the project, meaning the president seems likely to be able to complete construction. Halting the project now would probably require a fresh lawsuit from an individual or group with standing, such as Congress, which would be a nonstarter while Republicans control the House and Senate.
In an unusual lineup, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal justices dissented, saying the construction was “likely unlawful.”
The White House is “an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” the chief justice wrote in a lengthy dissent that quoted from Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. “All the more reason to ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”
Monday’s order reversed lower-court rulings that would have halted aboveground construction because the judges found that the administration had exceeded its authority by moving ahead with major changes to the White House campus without congressional approval.
The ballroom project, which includes a secure military bunker underneath, is just one way Mr. Trump has been aggressively remaking Washington during his second term. He has proposed building a 250-foot triumphal arch near Washington’s border with Arlington, Va. His allies have been pressing to inscribe his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts even after a judge ordered it removed from the building.
But the ballroom has been particularly personal for Mr. Trump, who has for years said that the White House needed a larger space to host special guests without having to erect a tent on the South Lawn.
The order from the Supreme Court was the second time in less than two weeks that the court weighed in on the project. The first time, on Aug. 21, Chief Justice Roberts issued a one-sentence placeholder known as an administrative stay to buy his colleagues additional time to more fully consider the administration’s request to block the lower-court rulings against the president.
The chief justice handles emergency requests from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and initially acted on his own. He did not provide any reasoning for the initial order, which also allowed construction to continue.
The new order represents the views of the full nine-member court in a more lasting way.
In a social media post on Monday afternoon, the president celebrated the decision, which he said cleared the way for the project’s completion in the summer of 2028.
“We are living in the Golden Age of America, and this Building will be one of the Greatest ever constructed in Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The magnificent Ballroom and Military Complex will be something that the entire Country is very proud of.”
The challenge to the project was brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit chartered by Congress to guard public buildings. The trust argued that a longtime member, Alison K. Hoagland, a District of Columbia resident and architectural historian, had been personally and professionally harmed by the destruction of one of the most prominent public buildings in the United States, which she has routinely walked past and reflected on in her work.
In an unsigned order on Monday, the court rejected those assertions of “aesthetic, cultural and historical interests” as a basis for bringing a legal challenge, with the majority writing that the Supreme Court had “repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury.”
The majority also indicated that the Trump administration had made persuasive arguments that halting construction might harm national security.
In recent months, the ballroom project has grown in scale, with the president and his lawyers emphasizing the national security imperative of what they now refer to as the “military/ballroom complex.” It includes a major upgrade to the bunker beneath, built during World War II and known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts said the construction was probably illegal because of Congress’s authority over buildings on public land in Washington. He pointed to past rulings, in which the Supreme Court had found that a person’s “mere esthetic interests,” like those of Ms. Hoagland, the preservationist, could count as a concrete harm and legal grounds to sue.
“While it is true that nearly every government action will offend someone somehow, not every government action will interfere in a particular way with someone’s documented interest in viewing a particular historic building,” he wrote. He added: “Given the distinctive nature of the White House and Hoagland’s focused and substantiated interest in viewing it in its traditional form, her aesthetic injury from the construction of the ballroom is concrete and particularized.”
In the lower courts, Judge Richard J. Leon, who sits on the District Court in Washington, initially halted construction of the ballroom and rejected the administration’s claims. But he allowed work on the project to continue temporarily to allow for an appeal.
“While I take seriously the government’s concerns regarding the safety and security of the White House grounds and the president himself, the existence of a ‘large hole’ beside the White House is, of course, a problem of the president’s own making!” the judge wrote in March.
In August, the appeals court in Washington ruled 2 to 1 against the president in a lengthy opinion that said Congress has control over federal property and had not ceded its authority to the president to dramatically redesign the “People’s House” to “fit a particular president’s desires.”
The Trump administration quickly asked the Supreme Court to intervene, telling the justices that it was essentially too late to stop the project and that doing so would put the president and his family at risk. A team of 250 workers has pushed ahead with construction 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and it is 65 percent complete, according to the government’s court filings.
Mr. Trump had touted that the luxury space would be funded by private donations, but in June the administration transferred about $350 million in taxpayer money from the Secret Service for “security enhancements” to the ballroom and bunker.
The Secret Service has said that it plans to spend $220 million to “harden” the partially built ballroom against attack, including the installation of bulletproof glass, drone detection technology, chemical and other threat filters and detectors. The taxpayer-funded upgrades also include a $180 million visitor screening facility.
