In a sharply worded opinion, the United States Appeals Court for the District of Columbia has upheld an injunction against the construction of President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, citing the need for congressional approval.
The appeals court voted on Friday by a margin of two to one, with judges Patricia Millett and Bradley Garcia forming a majority. The third judge on the panel, Neomi Rao, dissented.
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The lengthy opinion began with a reflection on the White House’s role as the “people’s house”. Congress, the judges explained, wields control over the building and its surrounding property, and the president is only a temporary tenant.
“The President has no — and claims no — constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people,” Garcia and Millett wrote.
They then proceeded to describe the series of events that led to October’s abrupt demolition of the century-old East Wing of the White House, flattened to make way for Trump’s long sought-after ballroom.
“We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President, unilaterally and using privately collected funds, demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now,” they wrote.
Allowing the ballroom construction to proceed will cause “permanent and irreversible harm” to the “historic, architectural, and aesthetic interests” represented by the plaintiffs, according to the ruling.
Millett and Garcia — who were appointed by Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden respectively — therefore upheld a lower court decision to pause construction while litigation proceeds.
“The Defendants have not shown that Congress delegated that authority to either the President or the National Park Service,” the judges wrote.
“Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.”
Their injunction, however, came with a 14-day stay on its implementation, to allow the Trump administration to appeal to the Supreme Court.
On his social media platform Truth Social, Trump quickly fired back that the Supreme Court was precisely where he planned to take the case.
“We will be immediately appealing to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump wrote at one point in his lengthy, 487-word post.
“The Military and Secret Service are viewing this horrendous, politically motivated, and unlawful ruling as a National Security threat to our Nation in that the entire Complex is being built for the protection of our Country and, additionally, all future Presidents.”
Trump has repeatedly argued that the ballroom is necessary for national security purposes, creating a space for presidents to securely hold events.
Critics, however, have denounced the ballroom as an unnecessary and destructive vanity project undertaken without following the correct legal protocol.
The idea for a new ballroom stretches back to 2011, when Trump, then known primarily as a real estate magnate, told ABC News of his ambitions to build an opulent White House ballroom to host state dinners.
He had emerged at the time as a critic of then-President Obama, and he renewed his pitch to build a White House ballroom during his first successful presidential bid in 2016.
But the idea languished during Trump’s first term. However, after being sworn in for a second term in 2025, Trump quickly resumed his push for a ballroom, along with other projects designed to reshape the Washington, DC, landscape.
When Trump publicly discussed the ballroom proposal in July 2025, he pledged its construction would not be destructive.
“It won’t interfere with the current building. It will be near it, but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building,” he said at the time.
But last October, without advance notice, construction crews began levelling the East Wing, which was first built in 1902.
The nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation was among the groups that expressed outrage at the sudden demolition.
Plans also emerged showing that the ballroom would be approximately 90,000 square feet, or roughly 8,361 square metres, a size that would dwarf the main structure of the White House.
In December, the National Trust filed a lawsuit, arguing that Trump exceeded his authority by unilaterally destroying the East Wing and erecting a ballroom.
On March 31, US District Court Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of Republican President George W Bush, sided with the National Trust and issued an initial injunction to pause the construction.
“Unless and until Congress blesses this project through statutory authorization, construction has to stop,” Leon wrote at the time.
He did, however, offer a carve-out to allow any construction that was necessary for national security — though he clarified that his exception did not allow for the ballroom project as a whole to proceed.
On Friday, the National Trust applauded the appeals court’s decision to maintain Judge Leon’s injunction, pausing the ballroom’s construction while litigation proceeds.
“This is a great day for our country and for the American people’s right to voice their opinions about the historic places they cherish, including the White House,” the trust’s president, Brent Leggs, said.
“From the beginning, our position has been clear and consistent: the law states that only Congress can authorize the construction of a ballroom at the White House.”
But Trump and his allies have argued that the ballroom as a whole is a critical national security asset. In recent months, they have suggested the structure would be six storeys deep, with bomb shelters, an underground military hospital, secret military facilities and drone-related protective materials on the roof.
Trump also quoted extensively from the appeals court’s dissent, issued by Rao, one of his judicial appointees.
“The district court issued an extraordinary injunction halting all construction of the ballroom. This was a blatant abuse of discretion,” Rao said, reflecting on Leon’s decision.
She added that she believes the National Trust has no standing and that the district court had let “aesthetic displeasure” outweigh “the government’s security interests”. She also framed the construction as a matter of executive authority.
“Because the injunction is beyond the proper province of the federal courts, construction should be allowed to continue,” Rao wrote.
But her colleagues on the appeals court ruled otherwise — and even suggested that the ballroom project might continue, should Trump prevail in the overall litigation.
The injunction, after all, only pauses the construction while the lawsuit unfolds, they wrote.
“This ruling does not even necessarily mean that the Defendants may not ultimately construct the ballroom,” Garcia and Millett said.
“What it does mean is that the Defendants may not do so during the district court’s expeditious litigation without securing Congress’s authorization, as the Constitution and laws require.”
