Yesterday, the Supreme Court once again exercised its shadow docket muscles to stay Judge Richard Leon’s injunction and allow Donald Trump to keep building his ballroom on top of the East Wing’s corpse. The eight-page per curiam went out of its way to explain that it was not taking on standing on whether the project itself was “legal,” but merely stating that the plaintiff lacked standing. And, for what it’s worth, even if this is illegal (it is), probably no one has standing!

In light of this opinion, a modest proposal for the next president: immediately tear down One First Street and put an even bigger ballroom there. Because, I don’t know, just say national security.

And why not? One First Street is a federal building sitting on federal ground in the District of Columbia. The exact same law that makes it patently illegal for Donald Trump to have torn down the East Wing and started work on a 90,000 sq. ft. event space covers the Supreme Court building too. Chief Justice John Roberts, joining with the Democratic-appointed justices in dissenting from the opinion, noted the explicit illegality:

Pursuant to its plenary constitutional authority over the District of Columbia and federal property, Congress has explicitly prohibited the construction of any “building or structure . . . on any reservation, park, or public grounds of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia without express authority of Congress.” 40 U. S. C. §8106. The ballroom is a building or structure being erected on federal park grounds—President’s Park—in the District of Columbia. Yet Congress has not passed any law resembling “express authority” for the Executive’s construction of it.

The Trump administration tried to defend its actions, claiming that 54 U. S. C. §100101(a) grants presidents broad authority to conserve “historic objects,” which Roberts deliciously counters with “This is likely not express authorization to raze the East Wing and replace it with a ballroom.”

Tearing down the Supreme Court’s headquarters would run afoul of the same law, but since the current majority has made clear that there’s no one capable of enforcing that law, the next president should be welcome to — nay, encouraged to — send the bulldozers down to the Court within the first 100 days of the next administration. After all, we NEED a new ballroom. A first-class nation needs a safe and secure location to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and, as we all know, Trump’s proposed ballroom is not big enough to host that dinner.

You might be asking, “wait, isn’t building a ballroom big enough for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner one of Trump’s arguments for this project?” And the answer to that is two-fold: (1) yes; and, (2) [middle finger emoji].

The Trust’s standing argument, that yesterday’s majority rejected, rested on the declaration of Alison Hoagland — a professor of historic preservation, longtime Trust executive committee member, and author of books on American architecture — who lives in D.C., visits the White House neighborhood about once a month, and says the ballroom’s scale, height, and massing will wreck the experience. The majority’s response:

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 Court spends a page on Lujan, where an earlier Court greenlit environmental destruction by claiming an “aesthetic” interest in seeing nature couldn’t establish standing. Except that’s not actually what Lujan said. In fact, the Lujan majority conceded that the desire to observe a particular animal, “even for purely [a]esthetic purposes,” was “undeniably a cognizable interest for purpose of standing.” The plaintiffs lost because the majority declared that vague plans to “some day” hope to see nature wasn’t concrete enough of a plan.

Hoagland, meanwhile, has concrete plans. She has a recurring appointment with the location she’s suing about. So the majority shifted the goalposts to reclassify a cognizable aesthetic interest as “mere offense” and then citing taxpayer-standing cases about people who were mad at government policy in the abstract. Roberts catches it:

With the Court’s rejection of Hoagland’s standing today, however, it now is the case that “I want to look at a crocodile” can adequately answer the ever critical “what’s it to you?” question of Article III standing, while “I want to look at the White House” cannot.

Wait, John Roberts wrote that? The same guy who has spent two decades throwing up barricades around the courthouse steps to keep almost every plaintiff out? It’s telling when the justice most committed to shrinking standing to the size of a postage stamp refused to go along with this constriction.

Roberts had issued the administrative stay that kept the bulldozers running while the Court considered this application. An administrative stay doesn’t necessarily telegraph a justice’s ultimate vote, of course. But it doesn’t not do that, either. When the chief personally cleared the way for construction to continue, it looked like well-appointed curtains for the ballroom case. Which, I guess, it was. But he wasn’t willing to join his colleagues in ripping them down.

The opinion’s reverse-engineering borders on comical. In Part II, the majority pads out the equities with declarations from every security official the administration could force to sign one. They cite the Secretary of the Army explaining that the ballroom’s “height and mass” are “crucial” to shield the underground military installation “from kinetic impacts,” and that without them “engineers would need to dig impractically deep.” Weird how the underground installation was always planned and yet no one thought the East Wing needed to be replaced until Trump decided he wanted a ballroom.

For what it’s worth, the Secretary of the Army resigned yesterday.

Roberts refused to let the majority’s acceptance of this obvious falsehood slip by unnoticed, bringing the administration’s own past statements to the lower court as receipts:

[T]he Government informed the District Court that its construction work on below-ground secure facilities was “driven by national security concerns independent of the above-grade construction” of the ballroom.

The administration litigates by throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. Except it’s Trump so it’s egg noodles and ketchup hitting the wall, but the result is the same. Lucky for Trump, there’s a critical mass of justices willing to inspect the mess and declare it a masterpiece of modern art.

One might say that, unlike with the aesthetic standing hook in the East Wing case, proposing to destroy One First Street might give the justices themselves standing. Maybe? On the other hand, the building is just a federal office building. Would Fox Mulder have standing to block the demolition and rebuilding of the Hoover Building? Could a district judge enjoin a move to a new courthouse complex? That can’t be right. But it’s the logical extension of any claim that the justices have some special standing to block changes to their office space.

So go ahead and tear it down. Rent them a WeWork in D.C. — those still exist, right? — and tell them to pound sand. When they sue, the answer writes itself.

Gee, standing is a tricky thing, sport. You go on such long vacations every summer, some of them paid for by parties with interests before the Court. How were we to know you had any concrete plans to come back? And, you see, my newly appointed Secretary of the Army signed this napkin about the dire security necessity of shielding Union Station from attack with a giant ballroom here. You understand, right? What is it your boy used to say? Oh right, “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Is it petty and ridiculous. Sure. But those also happen to be the two best words available to describe this majority. As they say in A Man For All Seasons, the sort of pretentious quote justices like to quote, “and when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide?” Not in One First Street!

And if the threat of sending a backhoe over to Alito’s office is what finally makes court reform a reality — then so be it. A switch in time saved nine before.

Earlier: Bunker Ballroom Blocked
Ballroom Blitz Blocked
Trump Gets Brutal News Flash: The White House Ain’t Mar-A-Lago
Judge Gives Trump’s ‘Of Course I Can Bulldoze The East Wing If I Wanna’ Argument The Side-Eye It Deserves
DOJ Files Ballroom Brief That Reads Like Truth Social Post — Because Trump Probably Wrote It
Looks Like Trump Dictated Another Barely Coherent Ballroom Brief
Supreme Court Term Limits Are The Least Dangerous, Most Necessary Reform On The Menu

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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