Can anything stop the White House ballroom?

A preservationist group likely has no standing to stop the White House ballroom, the Supreme Court says.

Let’s start with a little bit of history.

The majority’s per curiam (unsigned) opinion focuses entirely on standing, a principle rooted in Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution that gives federal courts the authority to resolve only actual “cases” and “controversies.”

Courts have historically understood that to mean that a plaintiff must prove a concrete, particularized injury to have the right to sue in federal court. That injury must be imminent or already happening.

“So, if I think you were speeding when you went into your office this morning, I can’t sue in federal court because it’s none of my business,” David Super , a Georgetown Law professor, explained.

In other words, the alleged harm must be real and specific, not abstract. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia famously put it , “what’s it to you?”

Just ask the anti-abortion doctors who tried to take mifepristone off the market, the Republican-led states that challenged the Biden administration’s outreach to social media platforms to take down COVID-19 and election-related content, or the Democratic-led states that just recently hoped to block Trump’s executive order targeting mail ballots.

Each time, the Supreme Court ruled they had no legal standing.

Standing doctrine is complicated, with many different tracks.

In the ballroom lawsuit, the Justice Department and a preservationist group have fought over whether one of its member’s concerns about the project can be likened to environmental groups that the Supreme Court has previously authorized.

“The court has recognized in the past that aesthetic problems, that not being able to do things you like to do even if it isn’t immediately associated with money, is injury,” Super said.

That concept was cemented in a 1972 case called Sierra Club v. Morton , in which Justice Potter Stewart wrote that aesthetic and environmental wellbeing are “important ingredients of the quality of life in our society.”

Scalia, the late conservative icon, would tighten the requirements of that precedent decades later in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife. The landmark 1992 case stated that generalized grievances were not enough to establish standing.

In 2000, the high court ruled in Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services Inc. that an environmental organization had standing to sue over concerns about discharges from a wastewater treatment plant into a South Carolina river.

At the time, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed to how its members said they were being forced to abandon fishing and other activities in the area. The late liberal justice wrote that the alleged harmful pollutants “directly affected” their “recreational, aesthetic, and economic interests.”

When the court decided Summers v. Earth Island Institute nine years later, Scalia in his majority opinion acknowledged that environmental harm can create standing “if that harm in fact affects the recreational or even the mere esthetic interests of the plaintiff.”

The ballroom case dissenters — the court’s liberal wing plus Chief Justice John Roberts — found the comparison apt. They said a historic preservationist is aesthetically injured by the transformation of a historic building like the White House, just like an environmentalist suffers from an animal’s extinction.

The five-justice majority viewed the preservationists’ issue with the 90,000-square-foot ballroom as nothing more than “distaste.” The opinion suggested their theory would allow virtually any citizen to sue when the government does something they don’t like.

“The majority here believes the principle of limiting the court’s jurisdiction is more important than the principle of following the law,” Super said.

He suggested that for Roberts, it was “too radical” to allow “obviously illegal activity go forward based on a extremely narrow reading of standing.”

“The chief [is] not a liberal on standing issues or on environmental issues by any means, but this move was just too extreme for the chief justice’s taste, and certainly for the three liberals.”

The 5-4 decision means the ballroom can move ahead full steam with its nearly around-the-clock construction unless someone else can convince the justices they have standing.

It’s not clear anyone will. In 2013, Justice Samuel Alito reaffirmed the Supreme Court’s decades-long principle that assuming no one would have standing is not a reason to relax the requirement.

“The court has occasionally allowed some pretty exotic forms of standing,” Super said. “But I think the greater likelihood is that this will only be litigated if a majority of at least one chamber of Congress decides that it is offensive.”

With Republicans in control of Congress, there’s no current political will for Congress to try to assert standing as an institution. And for any Democrats who want to try it alone, they’ll have to grapple with the limits the Supreme Court placed on individual lawmaker suits in its 1997 Raines v. Byrd decision.

It leaves President Trump taking the win.

“I am pleased to report that the United States Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of the Ballroom/Military Complex being built without any further contingency, doubt, or threat,” the president wrote on Truth Social . “When completed in the Summer of 2028, the magnificent Ballroom and Military Complex will be something that the entire Country is very proud of.”

Welcome to The Gavel , The Hill’s weekly newsletter unpacking the intersection of courts & politics from Zach Schonfeld and Sophie Brams. Email us tips at zschonfeld@thehill.com and sbrams@thehill.com . You can also reach out to us on X ( @ZachASchonfeld and @sophiebrams ) or Signal ( zachschonfeld.48 and sbrams.32).

Kalshi takes a hit: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that prediction market platforms can be regulated by states like gambling and sportsbooks, a blow for the surging industry.

Third time’s not the charm: Trump can’t move his hush-money conviction out of New York’s state courts because he waited too long to make the request, per a federal judge. It’s the third time U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has denied the president’s bid.

Abortion pill lawsuit paused: A lawsuit seeking to roll back the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone is being put on hold until after the midterms, a federal judge in Texas decided.

Kirk murder case headed to trial: The 23-year-old man accused of fatally shooting Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk during an event at Utah Valley University last fall can stand trial, Judge Tony Graf ruled. The judge found sufficient probable cause to support seven charges against Tyler Robinson, including aggravated murder.

Freedom Fuel under fire: A gas station chain promoted by the Trump administration for its lower prices may have sold fuel that it never paid for , according to a new federal lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania.

Stuart McCommas , a former chief of staff at the Justice Department and deputy White House counsel, is joining the D.C. office of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. Read the firm’s announcement .

Jones Day is welcoming back Yaakov Roth , the former senior deputy assistant attorney general of DOJ’s Civil Division, as a partner in its D.C. office. Check out what some in the firm had to say .

What we learned from Alito’s financial disclosure

Justice Samuel Alito ’s 2025 financial disclosure was released this week, providing a new glimpse into his book deal and investments.

Disclosures for the other eight Supreme Court justices came out earlier this summer. But Alito requested an extension, as he repeatedly does.

He has newly reported receiving $33,333 from Hatchette Book Group. It owns the conservative imprint Basic Liberty, which is publishing Alito’s book next month.

It remains unclear how much more might still be coming, but that initial figure pales in comparison to the massive sums that Alito’s colleagues have reported in their recent disclosures.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ’s book advances surpassed $2 million for her memoir, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor has struck multiple lucrative book deals. Justice Neil Gorsuch reported $300,000 in royalty income last year, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett reported nearly $850,000.

Beyond books, Alito’s disclosure also includes new details on his investment portfolio, which spans multiple retirement and brokerage accounts.

Unlike most of his colleagues, Alito invests directly in more than two dozen individual companies’ stocks. He is required to divulge those sales closer to real-time, so we already knew he sold his stake in Boeing, for example. Dive deeper here into those holdings, exclusive for Hill Insider subscribers.

But Alito owns plenty of mutual funds, ETFs and diversified positions, too. Much of his portfolio remained the same, but the document discloses several changes that reveal the justice’s current investment strategy:

Bought up municipal bonds: Alito made significant purchases of funds that focus on providing tax-exempt fixed income, like municipal bonds. In January, Alito bought shares of Fidelity’s tax-free bond fund worth between $100,000 and $250,000, and he also invested at least $30,000 in a similar Vanguard bond fund. In May, Alito began buying shares of Baird’s strategic municipal bond fund. By the end of the year, that Baird position had amounted to more than $100,000, the disclosure reveals. Alito also bought two other municipal bond funds but sold those positions later in the year.

Sold index funds in May: On May 15, Alito sold parts of his stakes in four index funds. Each sale was valued at less than $15,000. Two of the positions track large-cap growth stocks (iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF and iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF), another tracks large-cap value stocks (Vanguard High Dividend Yield ETF) and the fourth focuses on global companies (Dimensional International Value ETF). The sales all came one day after the Dow reclaimed 50,000 and the S&P 500 reached what was then an all-time high. Alito parked at least some of the proceeds in a money market account.

Bought other index funds: As Alito sold those four positions, he was buying other index funds last year that follow a similar pattern. In a separate investment account, Alito purchased shares of another fund that tracks large-cap growth stocks (Vanguard Growth ETF), twice added positions in value stocks (Vanguard Value ETF) and also bought shares of an international fund (Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF). And three times, Alito made purchases in a small-cap fund (iShares Core S&P Small Cap ETF). Each buy was valued at less than $15,000.

End-of-year moves: In the final days of the calendar year, Alito made some final trades. On Dec. 16, he sold shares in a balanced fund he owns (Vanguard’s Wellington Mutual Fund) worth between $15,001 and $50,000. Days later, Alito sold shares of Vanguard’s Target Retirement Income Fund worth up to $15,000 he owned in his Roth IRA. Alito retains significant positions in both holdings.

Don’t be surprised if additional hearings are scheduled throughout the week. But here’s what we’re watching for now:

Thomas Robinson and Agostino Abbatiello , the alleged ringleaders of a cocaine-trafficking operation involving two Penn State fraternities, to appear in a Pennsylvania courtroom for preliminary hearings

Federal judge in Boston to hear arguments as she weighs whether to issue a longer block on the Postal Service’s new mail ballot restrictions ahead of the midterms

Status conference scheduled in a lawsuit brought by the DC Preservation League and two individuals over the National Park Service’s plans to renovate the golf course at East Potomac Park

The Supreme Court will release its final summer order list

Federal judge in D.C. to hear arguments as Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin, and reporter Lara Korte seeking a preliminary injunction that bars the Pentagon from firing them

D.C. Superior Court judge to consider former Olympian David Hearn ’s request to block federal prosecutors from reviving a felony vandalism case against him

Federal judge in Seattle to weigh bid from 16 Democratic state attorneys general to block the Education Department from discontinuing mental health funding under the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant Program for low-income/rural schools and Mental Health Services Grant Program

Hearing scheduled in Massachusetts federal court to decide whether to grant summary judgment in a lawsuit against the Office of Management and Budget and the Education Department for preventing the Institute of Education Sciences from spending various research appropriations.

The New York Times’s Jodi Kantor: How the Supreme Court Locks Away Its Own History