Chief Justice John Roberts issued an order on Friday that lets the Trump administration continue construction of the White House ballroom for now.
The order from Roberts, who handles emergency litigation requests from Washington, backs the administration at least for the time being, while giving the full Supreme Court more time to decide the issue that ran up against a Friday deadline.
Although the administration may ultimately prevail, Friday’s order is not the final word. As is typical for such administrative orders, there was no accompanying explanation.
A Washington, D.C., judge had entered a preliminary injunction against the administration, and a divided appellate panel upheld the injunction on Aug. 7. The panel cited the lack of legally required congressional authorization for President Donald Trump’s desired construction, over dissent from a Trump-appointed judge.
The two judges in the panel majority, Obama appointee Patricia Millett and Biden appointee Bradley Garcia, said they weren’t weighing in on the wisdom of the project as a policy matter but that “whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide.”
The panel majority said the group that brought the case, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, had standing to sue, pointing to one of its members, professor Alison Hoagland, an architectural historian who studies and relies on the architectural design of the White House and President’s Park in her work. Hoagland said that building the 90,000 square-foot ballroom would permanently harm the White House and President’s Park by overshadowing the White House, and that those changes would cause both professional and personal injuries to her “aesthetic, cultural, and historic interests.”
While the administration argued that Hoagland could avoid her claimed injury by simply averting her gaze, the panel 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.”
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 the plaintiff’s “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.
The panel majority put its ruling on hold for two weeks to give the administration the chance to seek relief from the justices, setting the ruling to take effect Friday absent any intervention from the high court.
When U.S. District Judge Richard Leon issued the injunction, which has not taken effect while this appeal plays out, he emphasized that his order would not entirely halt the project. The George W. Bush appointee’s order specified that it wouldn’t prohibit “below-ground construction, including below-ground construction of national security facilities, as well as above-ground construction short of constructing the proposed above-ground ballroom that is strictly necessary to cover, secure, and protect such national security facilities, provided that any such construction will not lock in the above-ground size and scale of the ballroom.”
The order also said it wouldn’t prohibit measures and construction “strictly necessary” to keep Trump, his staff and the White House grounds safe, short of constructing the proposed above-ground ballroom, and so long as any such measures don’t lock in the above-ground size and scale of the ballroom.
Seeking to immediately lift the injunction at the Supreme Court, Solicitor General John Sauer said leaving it intact “would wrongfully install a single district judge as sole arbiter of what further construction is ‘strictly necessary’ to protect the safety of the President, his family, staff members, and visitors to the White House, including foreign dignitaries, and presidents and prime ministers of other countries.”
Opposing the administration’s application, the National Trust noted that each court to examine the issue so far has agreed that the government has “no unilateral legal authority — constitutional, statutory, or otherwise — to build a massive ballroom on the site of the now-demolished East Wing.”
The group said it would face “irreparable harm” if construction were to continue and potentially be completed before its lawsuit could be resolved. It said government officials have made “no secret of the fact that if the Court permits construction to continue, they will declare the case over.”
And despite the administration’s claims of national security concerns, the trust noted that the injunction lets officials “continue building their underground military facility, to protect the President, his family, and his staff, and to maintain the safety and security of the White House complex.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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