BREAKING: SCOTUS allows Trump to continue construction on new White House ballroom

The Supreme Court on Monday granted an emergency request from the Trump administration, allowing construction to continue on the new White House ballroom project. This comes after an interim decision from Chief Justice John Roberts on Aug. 21 granted an administrative stay. 

The justices ruled 5-4 in favor of the Trump administration, with the unsigned ruling stating that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which brought forth the legal challenge, likely does not have the legal standing to bring suit. 

“Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project. We conclude only that, based on the submissions before us, the government is likely to prevail in showing that the Trust lacks Article III standing to challenge the project in federal court and that the remaining stay factors favor relief. Accordingly, the application for stay presented to the Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is granted," the ruling stated. Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in dissenting.

The court wrote that it 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 under Article III.” The ruling stated, “to secure standing a plaintiff must identify some concrete and particularized injury ‘other than the psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees.’”

Roberts, however, said that National Trust for Historic Preservation board of trustees member Alison Hoagland, in her role as a historic preservationist, “can be aesthetically injured in a concrete, particularized way by the transformation of a historic building that she frequently enjoys, 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.”

Hoagland had argued that she regularly walks by the White House, and that she would “suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic, cultural and historical interests, if a ballroom of the proposed form and scale were constructed.”

Trump wrote in response to the ruling, “I am pleased to report that the United States Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of the Ballroom/Military Complex being built without any further contingency, doubt, or threat. We are living in the Golden Age of America, and this Building will be one of the Greatest ever constructed in Washington, D.C. When completed in the Summer of 2028, the magnificent Ballroom and Military Complex will be something that the entire Country is very proud of. The Project, despite the baseless lawsuit brought by the so-called National Trust for Historic Preservation of the United States, which is not in any way affiliated with the United States Government, is under budget and ahead of schedule. The Ballroom is totally funded by Great Patriots and Corporations and, therefore, is a Gift — At no cost to the American Taxpayer.”