House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and 32 other members of Congress filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, urging the justices to reject an emergency request from the Trump administration that seeks to continue construction on a massive White House ballroom.
The filing comes in National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, where the administration is asking the high court for an immediate stay on lower court injunctions that halted the project.
Two lower courts previously ruled that the executive branch likely acted without legal authority when it moved to demolish the White House’s East Wing to construct the estimated $400 million ballroom.
Represented by the Constitutional Accountability Center, the congressional coalition argued that the Property Clause and the Appropriations Clause of the U.S. Constitution place decisions regarding federal grounds solely in the hands of the legislative branch.
According to the brief, the administration cannot rely on statutory provisions for routine upkeep or national security claims to bypass legislative approval. The lawmakers noted that recent appropriations for Executive Residence maintenance totaled just $2,475,000—covering less than 1% of the project’s estimated price tag.
“If the President believes national-security concerns warrant the demolition or construction of federal property, the Constitution requires him to come to Congress,” the lawmakers wrote in the filing.
Government watchdog group Public Citizen also backed the effort to keep the injunction in place, raising concerns regarding funding transparency.
“If President Trump is so proud of his Golden Ballroom, why is he so afraid to ask Congress to approve it? A key reason the Constitution requires Congress to authorize the White House Ballroom Project is to ensure transparency and oversight of the ‘$335 million of an expected $400 million’ that the White House says it’s raised from donors including corporations who have been awarded billions in government contracts and anonymous donors with secret agendas,” said Jon Golinger, a democracy advocate with Public Citizen. “We agree that by law Congress needs to authorize it and urge the Court to reject the White House’s desperate ‘Hail Mary’ pass.”
The Supreme Court is expected to decide by Friday whether to issue an administrative stay or allow the injunction to remain in effect, which would keep construction halted unless Congress passes specific legislation to authorize and fund the project.
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