Supreme Court Finds No One Is Sufficiently Injured by the Drone Base on Top of the Ballroom

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last week that construction may continue on a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a multi-story underground military facility, and a rooftop drone installation at the White House, on the grounds that nobody who sued has been hurt in a way the Court recognizes.

The order was unsigned. Five justices agreed to it and none of them put a name on it. It did not address whether any of this is legal.

The case reached the emergency docket after Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon temporarily sided with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which had asked that work pause long enough for the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts to look at the plans, for the planning commission to approve them, and for Congress to authorize the thing. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a short administrative stay freezing Leon’s order. The full Court caught up about a week and a half later and made it permanent enough.

The majority’s reasoning, per the order, is that the National Trust probably lacks standing — the requirement that you be the correct person, injured in the correct way, before a court will hear you. The opinion reasoned that the Court hasn’t found standing in a situation like this one, and that being offended, disagreeing, or finding something distasteful has never been enough.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a group that exists to object to things like the demolition of historic buildings. In this instance, the Court found, it is not the party entitled to object to the demolition of a historic building. The Court did not identify who would be. It ruled only that a proper plaintiff exists in principle, and that this was not one.

Roberts dissented, joined by the Court’s three liberals. He wrote, in substance, that the construction is likely unlawful and that letting it proceed was no win for the separation of powers. That is a notable break from a chief justice who has spent this term mostly waving through this administration’s claims of executive power, and it means the guy who paused the project first was also the guy who lost.

The practical effect is that the actual question — whether a president can demolish part of the White House and build a military installation underneath it without the reviews Congress created for precisely this purpose — stays open. The Court noted the case could come back.

In the meantime, a crew reported at 250 people is working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. The people building it are not waiting on the paperwork, because they have not been asked to.

The East Wing, built in 1902, came down last fall. The replacement was announced at a reported $200 million. Later reporting put it at $300 million. More recent reporting suggests it could clear $600 million. Officials say the ballroom itself is privately funded through donations. The security components are on the taxpayer.

The security components have grown.

According to court filings and the president’s own public remarks, as reported, the project is a large underground bunker plus a rooftop military facility, with a bulletproof, hermetically sealed ballroom sandwiched in between. Trump has described the military complex as being built under the ballroom, and has described the ballroom, in his own framing, as essentially a shed sitting on top of it — protection from drones and other things. He has also talked up the bulletproof glass.

A shed. Six hundred million dollars, and the room where the dancing happens is the lid.

He later gave reporters a tour and said the underground portion runs six stories and includes a military hospital, with the drone base up top. The tour was reportedly tied to a request that Congress appropriate $1 billion for security upgrades to the building. Democrats and some Republicans described the ask as extravagant, given that Congress spent the same month explaining to everyone else why there wasn’t money for things.

The security rationale has a wrinkle. The White House already has hardened underground shelter space, finished more than a decade ago, built to keep a president alive. That is not a secret. Reporting also indicates it’s genuinely unclear — legally and structurally — how the six stories of military facility are, in the president’s phrasing, wedded to and in service of the ballroom above them. Per one account, the answer to that depends partly on how the lawsuit comes out.

The lawsuit is on hold. The concrete is not.

Here is the mechanism worth carrying around with you. A standing ruling is not a finding that the government was right. It’s a finding that the courthouse door is closed to the specific person who knocked. The underlying question just sits there, unanswered, sometimes for years — which is tolerable for a dispute about a tax deduction and less tolerable for a dispute about a building, because buildings finish.

And the reviews the National Trust wanted are all pre-construction reviews. The planning commission, the fine arts commission, congressional authorization: their whole job is to happen while the site is still a hole in the ground. Run them afterward and they aren’t oversight. They’re a book review.

If the case returns with a plaintiff the majority finds acceptably aggrieved, the justices will be free to determine whether the East Wing was lawfully removed and whether the military complex under the ballroom was lawfully installed. They’ll have all the time in the world. There will be a very nice room to sit in.

The East Wing will not be there either way.