In a ruling on Monday, the Supreme Court is allowing President Donald Trump’s White House reconstruction to continue.
In the 5-4 decision, the justices granted an emergency request filed by the Trump administration, blocking lower court rulings that paused aboveground construction of the project. The unsigned ruling comes after Chief Justice John Roberts signed a temporary order allowing the construction to proceed.
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The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to halt the project, arguing the president didn’t have unilateral authority to proceed with the construction. But the Supreme Court said the trust lacked legal standing to bring the lawsuit. The court didn’t say whether Trump has the authority to carry out the construction without congressional approval, the order stated.
Despite Roberts’ recent temporary ruling, he dissented, along with three liberal justices.
“Construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year,” he said, according to NBC. “That construction is likely unlawful.”
Trump celebrated the legal win in a post on Truth Social, saying the U.S. was living in the “Golden Age of America,” and that once completed in 2028, it “will be something that the entire Country is very proud of.”
What is the case against the construction?
A member of the trust, Allison Hoagland, who lives in Washington, D.C., said she would “suffer injuries to her aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests” if the project of that size and scale were completed. But the court said it never found legal standing in cases like this before.
“To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury,” the court wrote.
Roberts, however, said he would’ve found that she did have legal standing in this case since she’s a preservationist.
“Hoagland can be aesthetically injured in a concrete, particularized way by the transformation of a historic building that she frequently enjoys,” Roberts wrote, “just as an environmentalist can sustain a concrete, particularized aesthetic injury from the extinction of a particular animal or the transformation of a particular forest or river that he regularly enjoys.”
Ballroom project
The Trump administration told the Supreme Court earlier this month that the ballroom project was 65% complete, with crews working on it 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The total project is suspected to be up to 90,000 square feet, with the ballroom interior taking up 22,000 square feet. The ballroom is designed to hold up to 1,000 guests, the White House has previously said.
The rest of the space is an expansive below-ground bunker, which includes secure locations and medical facilities the administration said are needed for security. The cost has ballooned from the $200 million the administration originally quoted to an estimated $600 million.
In his Truth Social post, Trump labeled the project as a “gift” and said that it would be “At no cost to the American Taxpayer,” something he has said in the past. But recent reporting found that more than half comes from taxpayers, while the rest comes from the military or the Secret Service.
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