A federal judge on Tuesday turned down preservationists’ request to halt President Donald Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom project, concluding that allowing below-ground construction to continue in the coming weeks was unlikely to produce irreparable harm to those opposed to the plan.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon denied the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s request for a temporary restraining order, but said he would hear arguments early next year about whether to issue a longer-term preliminary injunction against the project.
Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, also said the Trump administration must follow through on a pledge to submit the project to the National Capital Planning Commission by the end of this year.
“The court will hold them to that,” Leon said during a packed federal court hearing in Washington. “They’ve got until the end of this month.”
Leon issued the ruling after accepting a classified filing from the government detailing national security concerns about stopping the project. The submission was not made public, but it is publicly known that for decades the Presidential Emergency Operations Center was located beneath the now-demolished East Wing.
“President Trump has faced countless bad-faith left-wing legal attacks — this was no different,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post. “We will continue defending the President’s project in court in the coming weeks.”
Trump has claimed that, because the project involves the White House, it does not require any approval other than his. However, the administration has also said it plans to submit the project to the boards that typically sign off on major construction in and around Washington.
Despite Trump’s claim that no approvals were needed, it emerged in a court filing in the case Monday that National Park Service officials completed an environmental assessment of the project in August and said it didn’t require a more detailed environmental review.
A lawyer for the National Trust, Tad Heuer, called that assessment “woefully inadequate.” He also noted that the real-world project has already departed in significant ways from the plans submitted to the Park Service. The East Wing Colonnade, for example, was visibly razed in October despite the planning document saying the feature was to be “renovated.”
“There are pile-drivers running around the clock,” Heuer told the judge. “There’s ongoing construction. Every day you have more concrete, more footprint.”
Heuer contended that handling of the project has violated at least four federal laws and that the public is legally entitled to offer comments on the plans before they proceed.
However, Leon suggested those laws are “principally focused” on the aesthetics of above-ground construction, so allowing below-ground construction to proceed for a few weeks would have little long-term harm. The judge did caution administration officials that they should be prepared to reverse the below-ground steps if he later concludes they sought to lock in a more expansive project than is eventually permitted.
