Lawyers for the National Trust for Historic Preservation urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon to leave in place a ruling by a federal court in Washington, D.C., that would temporarily block construction of a new White House ballroom. Gregory Craig, who served as the White House counsel during the Obama administration, accused the Trump administration of “trying to outrun judicial review” by expediting construction on the ballroom so that “it will soon be ‘virtually impossible to deconstruct.’” In the government’s view, Craig wrote, “if the Court grants their stay application,” which would allow construction on the project to continue, “this case is over—despite every court to have reviewed their project having found it to be patently unlawful, and no matter the fact that this Court has not reviewed those decisions on the merits.”
The order by Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, has never actually gone into effect. Construction on the project has continued to move forward, and the Trump administration told the court on Friday that the project was “65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion.”
In announcing the plan to tear down the East Wing of the White House to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the White House indicated in a press release on July 31, 2025, that, “[f]or 150 years, Presidents, Administrations, and White House Staff have longed for a large event space on the White House complex that can hold substantially more guests than currently allowed. President Donald J. Trump has expressed his commitment to solving this problem on behalf of future Administrations and the American people.”
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private nonprofit that describes itself as having “led the movement to save America’s historic places” “[f]or more than 75 years,” went to federal court in December. The trust asked Leon to put construction on hold until the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts could review, and the NCPC could approve, the plans for the construction, “and Congress has authorized the Ballroom’s construction.”
Leon’s order put on hold the construction of the ballroom above ground but allowed construction – of, for example, bomb shelters and bunkers – to continue underground, along with any above-ground construction necessary for safety and security. Leon’s ruling never went into effect, however, because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit temporarily paused it to give that court time to consider the Trump administration’s appeal.
On Aug. 7, a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit upheld Leon’s ruling but gave the federal government 14 days to go to the Supreme Court.
Only Congress has the power “to regulate the construction and demolition of White House structures,” Judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia wrote for the majority, and it has not approved any money for the ballroom construction. If the construction is not paused, they said, and the ballroom is built, it will inflict permanent harm (another criterion that courts consider in determining whether to grant temporary relief) on the trust’s members because of the “irreversible historical-preservation, architectural, and visual damage” that the new structure will cause.
The dissenting judge, Neomi Rao, contended (among other things) that the National Trust for Historic Preservation did not have a legal right to sue, known as standing, to stop the ballroom construction. Moreover, she added, the president has the power to make improvements to his residence, which likely includes the ballroom.
On Aug. 14, the Trump administration came to the Supreme Court, where it urged the justices to put Leon’s order on hold, calling it “extraordinary and unlawful.” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer contended that the ballroom project “will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security.”
The Trump administration argued the trust lacks a legal right to sue, known as standing, because its claims rest on a member’s “dislike” for the new construction – which is not the kind of injury that would allow the lawsuit to go forward. Moreover, Sauer added, “Congress has authorized the Project twice over” – by authorizing Trump and other presidents “to make ‘alteration[s]’ and ‘improvement[s]’ to the White House” and because it “broadly authorized the Executive to construct buildings in national parks.”
In its 40-page filing, the National Trust framed the question at the center of the dispute as “simply who decides whether a ballroom can be built on federal property. Our constitutional system and federal law commits that choice to Congress.” If the Trump administration “believe[s] there is a pressing need for a ballroom,” the trust argued, “nothing prevents [it] from asking Congress for one—today, tomorrow, or any time in the future. But” the government’s “efforts to foil judicial review and arrogate Congress’s exclusive powers should not be rewarded with a stay that allows [it] to complete a ballroom [it] lack[s] any authority to commence in the first place.”
The trust stressed that the Trump administration would not be harmed if the Supreme Court turns down its request to pause Leon’s order. There is, it said, “nothing in the district court’s carefully tailored injunction [that] prevents them from continuing work on the bunker, securing the East Wing site, or ensuring the safety of the President, his family, and staff. All the injunction stops is construction of a ballroom without prior congressional approval.”
By contrast, the trust continued, it will suffer permanent harm if the order is put on hold. The Trump administration, it said, has “raced to build as much of the ballroom as [it] can before the injunction goes into effect, proclaiming that ‘the structure should be substantially finished by November 2026’” and emphasizing that the project is now “beyond the point of return,” so that there would be no way to either take it down or change it.
To the extent that the Trump administration is concerned about delay, the trust said, it “would not oppose an expedited procedure” that would fast-track a petition from the government for review of the merits of the dispute, followed (if the court were to grant review) by oral arguments in October or November of this year.