最高法院允许特朗普继续修建白宫宴会厅

Supreme Court allows Trump to continue building White House ballroom

2026-08-31 4:03 PM ET / CNN

By Devan Cole, Betsy Klein, John Fritze

Updated Aug 31, 2026, 6:34 PM ET

Supreme Court allows Trump to continue building White House ballroom

The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for President Donald Trump to continue construction of a massive new ballroom at the White House, rejecting a challenge from a preservation group that was seeking to indefinitely halt the controversial project.

The ruling was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberals dissenting.

In its unsigned, eight-page decision, the conservative majority concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely lacked the legal right — known as standing — to challenge the project. The justices did not say whether the ballroom project was, in fact, lawful.

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The decision from the high court is a major victory for Trump and will likely give the president the time he needs to largely complete the project, even as the litigation over the ballroom continues in lower courts. The administration has been racing ahead with work on the nearly 90,000 square foot ballroom, which he views as the foundation of his presidential legacy. Trump has said the ballroom is necessary for national security reasons because it will include state-of-the-art features intended to protect the White House from an attack.

The decision is yet another win for the president on the emergency docket at the high court, which he helped ensure would have a conservative supermajority during his first term with the appointment of three justices. Trump’s wins on what also critics call the “shadow docket” have allowed the president to quickly reshape the federal government, upend immigration enforcement and undertake other controversial initiatives that lower courts ruled against.

Roberts, a member of the court’s conservative wing, penned a striking and history-heavy dissent, saying that the construction was “likely unlawful.”

“The White House is not just any building,” Roberts wrote. “In failing to appreciate as much, the court misconceives the plaintiff ’s injury, allowing the executive’s likely infringement of the legislature’s power of the purse and authority to regulate federal property in the District of Columbia to continue.”

The chief justice quoted Winston Churchill opining that people “shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

That, Roberts wrote, was “all the more reason to ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”

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The president has made significant efforts to impose his style and tastes on the White House and around Washington, DC. He has been personally involved in the ballroom, and hands-on with construction projects including a triumphal arch, the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, and a planned renovation of the Kennedy Center, all of which have faced legal challenges.

Critics argue Trump violated the law in tearing down the East Wing and pursuing the gilded site without congressional approval. The White House, they said, isn’t owned by the president who occupies it at any given time.

“Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help,” the DC US Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling against Trump earlier this month.

Trump heralded the Supreme Court decision in a social media post Monday evening, saying he was “pleased” as he claimed the legal matter was fully resolved.

“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,” he said.

Trump called the preservation group’s lawsuit “baseless” as he vowed the structure will be “one of the Greatest ever constructed in Washington, D.C.”

Preservation group not allowed to sue, majority says

The National Trust for Historic Preservation had argued that it had standing because one of its members, Alison Hoagland, has shown that her enjoyment of the White House as an architectural historian is being harmed by the project. The court’s majority rejected that argument, writing that “we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury” required to sue.

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

Brent Leggs, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said in a statement following the decision, “We are deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court’s ruling today and respectfully disagree with the majority’s opinion on standing. It is noteworthy that the majority did not weigh in on whether the ballroom project was in fact legal.”

Earlier this month, Roberts had allowed Trump to continue building the ballroom while the court reviewed the president’s emergency appeal. Without that temporary order, construction would have halted later that day under a lower court’s order.

As part of the litigation, the Trump administration revealed how much construction had progressed in recent months. Hundreds of workers are spending “20 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep the project ahead of schedule and under budget,” it said in court filings, and the project is already more than halfway done. Among the building materials being used is a type of concrete that is also used at nuclear power plants and nearly impossible to deconstruct.

The Trust seized on that point as they urged the Supreme Court to reject Trump’s emergency appeal to continue construction. They said the administration was trying to “outrun judicial review” by speeding ahead with a project that the administration is claiming may already be irreversible.

This story has been updated with additional details.