President Donald Trump said his administration will “immediately appeal” to the Supreme Court after its latest loss in the ballroom construction case. Although the high court hasn’t backed all Trump policies, he has reason to be hopeful about this one.
The ruling in question was issued Friday by a divided three-judge panel in Washington. The majority upheld a district judge’s preliminary injunction that blocked above-ground construction while the litigation continues.
“Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help,” wrote the two judges in the appellate majority, Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia. They were appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, respectively, a fact the current president emphasized in his Truth Social post vowing the instant appeal.
The Democratic-appointed duo stressed that the ruling “has nothing at all to do with whether the proposed ballroom is desirable, or not, as a matter of policy.” The two judges said their ruling won’t even necessarily stop Trump from building his desired ballroom in the end. But they said the administration can’t do so while the litigation is ongoing without securing legally required congressional authorization.
Millett and Garcia said they were unaware of any prior instance in which a president has “unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for.” They noted that Trump has already “bulldozed the entire East Wing in order to construct a massive, 90,000 square-foot ballroom paid for by private funds with no congressional oversight.”
Mindful of the likely appeal that Trump subsequently promised on social media, the majority put its ruling on hold for two weeks to give the administration time to appeal to the justices.
So, what can we expect to happen at the high court?
One aspect of the case to keep in mind is something Trump himself highlighted in his social media critique of the appellate ruling, where he said that the majority “is totally wrong on the vital subject of STANDING, of which the plaintiff has none.”
“Standing” refers to the important legal question of whether a plaintiff has the right to bring a lawsuit in the first place. If they don’t, then it doesn’t matter if they have an otherwise solid legal claim, because the courts aren’t even allowed to consider it. The justices have cited that standing requirement in some high-profile cases, such as when they unanimously ruled in 2024 that plaintiffs challenging the regulation of the abortion drug mifepristone lacked standing.
In Friday’s ruling against the president, the appellate majority said the group that brought the case, the National Trust, did have standing. The appeals court said the group clearly showed that one of its members, professor Alison Hoagland, has standing to sue in her own right because, the majority said, she has suffered a legal injury that is fairly traceable to the administration’s action and will likely be remedied by a ruling in the group’s favor.
The majority recounted that Hoagland is an architectural historian who studies and relies on the architectural design of the White House and President’s Park in her work. She said that building the 90,000 square-foot ballroom would permanently harm the White House and the President’s Park by overshadowing the White House. She said those changes would cause both professional and personal injuries to her “aesthetic, cultural, and historic interests.”
The appellate majority observed that both the Supreme Court and the Washington appeals court have found standing in similar circumstances. Among the examples they cited were instances in which those courts found standing: to challenge water pollution by people who lived within driving distance of a river and fished in it and picnicked along its bank; to challenge a change in the American burying beetle’s protected status by an amateur photographer and entomophile who went on annual vacations to view the beetle; and to challenge an environmental assessment of a license permitting satellites that caused light pollution by amateur stargazers and astronomers who look at the sky for recreation.
While the administration argued that Hoagland could avoid her claimed injury by simply not looking at the new ballroom, the appellate majority said the administration’s “cramped” theory of standing “would deem no one injured by a decision to raze the Statue of Liberty, to obscure the names on the Vietnam War Memorial, or to install a political billboard atop Mount Rushmore.”
But in her dissent, Trump appointee Neomi Rao said the case isn’t about “tearing down the White House and building a skyscraper or razing the Statue of Liberty.” She said it’s about the balance between “the asserted aesthetic harm to a single passerby and the safety and security of the President as well as his family, staff, and guests at the White House.” Rao said that balance falls in the government’s favor and that the district court therefore “abused its discretion in seizing control of construction at the President’s home and office.”
On the standing point, Rao said Hoagland lacks it because her “asserted aesthetic injury” is either “a speculative injury to her particular use of the White House” or “an imminent but generalized injury from incidentally viewing the ballroom.” Either theory fails, Rao said, arguing that the district court and the appeals court majority stretched Hoagland’s claims to satisfy standing requirements.
Although we don’t know what the Supreme Court will do until it rules, it would not be surprising to see the administration highlight Rao’s dissent in its forthcoming appeal, nor would it be surprising if the high court finds that dissent more persuasive than the appellate majority.
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