US supreme court allows Trump to keep building $400m White House ballroom

Justices’ 5-4 ruling permits Trump administration appeal to block lower court order halting above-ground work

A divided US supreme court has permitted Donald Trump to continue building his controversial $400m White House ballroom despite legal challenges, raising the likelihood it will be completed.

In a 5-4 ruling, the justices permitted the Trump administration’s request to ⁠block a lower court order that had halted above-ground construction of the project while a lawsuit by a historic preservation group seeks to block it.

The US president, who demolished the historic East Wing of the White House last year to make way for planned ballroom, has repeatedly touted it as “a gift” to the US people.

Monday’s decision from the supreme court comes after the court’s conservative chief justice, John Roberts, issued a temporary order that had enabled work to continue.

However, Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in dissenting from the majority’s decision and wrote that the construction was “likely unlawful”.

The court’s decision may allow Trump to bring to fruition a project that is at the center of his ambition to remake the US capital in his image. Since taking office, he hass ordered the National Mall’s reflecting pool covered in blue liner, proposed a $250m renovation to the Kennedy Center performing arts center that would see his name emblazoned on its side, and is pursuing plans to renovate a golf course and build a massive arch .

While some projects have hit legal roadblocks, such as when a judge ordered Trump’s name removed from the Kennedy Center, or descended into farce, like when the reflecting pool line began falling off, the supreme court’s decision today is a victory for the president.

Trump celebrated Monday’s ruling in a post on Truth Social, boasting that the White House complex would be “one of the Greatest ever constructed in Washington DC”, with construction to be completed by the summer of 2028.

In an unsigned opinion, the five conservative justices said the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States lacked standing to bring a lawsuit against the project. The trust had centered its argument on the declaration of a board member, the architectural historian Alison Hoagland, who said the ballroom was an “aesthetic, cultural and historical” affront because of its design, and that she would suffer “injuries” when viewing it in Washington DC .

“The government is likely to prevail in showing that the Trust lacks standing to challenge the East Wing project,” the majority opinion read.

“This court has not found standing in circumstances like these before. To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury.”

The justices also agreed that the government would suffer “irreparable harm” if construction is stopped, or only allowed to continue on a military installation set to be built underneath the ballroom while the above-ground portion remains unfinished.

The majority ultimately side stepped the question of whether the president’s decision to tear down a chunk of a building that rotates between presidential officeholders was actually legal.

“Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project,” they wrote.

The dissenting justices – Roberts, together with Democratic-appointed justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson – argued that the project is unlawful because Congress has not approved it.

In his opinion, Roberts wrote that the construction is a “likely infringement of the legislature’s power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue”, and says the majority’s ruling “is no victory for the separation of powers”.

“The ballroom is a building or structure being erected on federal park grounds – President’s Park – in the District of Columbia. Yet Congress has not passed any law resembling ‘express authority’ for the executive’s construction of it,” the chief writes.

He also disagreed that the potential injuries to Hoagland are insufficient for the historic trust to sue, saying she was “deeply committed to the preservation of such historic American buildings” through her work with the association.

“Hoagland’s injury suffices for standing,” Roberts wrote, likening the impact of the White House’s transformation on her to how “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”.