Judge denies bid to block Trump’s massive $400M White House ballroom on site of demolished East Wing

A federal judge in Washington has rejected a preservation group’s lawsuit to block President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project but left room for the group to revive its’ bid under a different legal theory.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on Thursday issued an opinion denying the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s request for an injunction to stop construction of the White House ballroom, which is currently being built with private funds sans congressional approval on the site where the East Wing stood until it was demolished on Trump’s orders this past October.

Leon wrote that the group had incorrectly based their lawsuit on what he called “a ragtag group of theories under the Administrative Procedure Act” as well as the U.S. Constitution and said the request for an injunction had to be denied because the White House Office of the Executive Residence was not an “agency” for the purposes of the APA.

He also said the National Trust had incorrectly failed to allege in its complaint that the entire ballroom project — including its use of private donations and shirking of Congressional oversight — was ultra vires, a Latin legal term meaning beyond one’s authority.

“Unless and until Plaintiff amends its existing complaint to include the necessary ultra vires claim, the Court cannot address the merits of the novel and weighty issues raised by this statutory challenge, and Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction must therefore be denied,” he said.

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