Chief Justice Roberts Abandons Court’s Conservatives and Stakes Independence From President Whose Power He Amplified

ATHENS — Chief Justice Roberts’s agreement with the Supreme Court’s liberals in dissenting on the construction of President Trump’s White House ballroom is a stunning moment for a jurist who usually sits at the van of his court’s majority.By a five to four margin — only the Chief Justice joined Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — the justices ruled that Mr. Trump’s ambitious vision, covering 90,000 square feet, could proceed because lower courts had “likely exceeded” their authority in blocking the project. Mr. Trump has argued that the White House needs a larger event space, and that the alterations are vital for security. The majority did not reach the underlying merits in the case, but did determine that the National Trust for Historic Preservation , which was challenging the construction “lacks standing,” a make or break constitutional requirement. A member of that group, Alison Hoagland, claimed that she would “suffer both professional and personal injuries, including to my aesthetic, cultural and historical interests, if a ballroom of the proposed form and scale were constructed.” The court’s majority was not persuaded. Chief Justice Roberts, writing his own dissent, lashed out at the ruling as “no victory for the separation of powers.” Mr. Trump, meanwhile, hailed the ruling as heralding the “Golden Age of America, and this Building will be one of the Greatest ever constructed in Washington, DC.” The preservation group insists that “Each President is a temporary steward of the People’s House and does not have the unilateral authority to demolish and redesign it.”The Chief’s dissent in National Park Service v. National Trust for Historic Preservation reasons that the construction is “likely unlawful” because Congress has 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.” Mr. Trump’s ballroom project, which is due to be completed in 2028, is being funded through hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations.Chief Justice Roberts also found, following Supreme Court precedent, that Ms. Hoagland’s alleged injury was “concrete” and “particularized” to her—“real, and not abstract.” The passion in his dissent conveys the impression that the jurist, who took office as the 17th chief justice in 2005, suffered the injury himself. He declares that the “White House is an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture” and reckons that the “White House is not just any building.”Chief Justice Roberts closes his dissent by invoking no less an authority than Winston Churchill, who in his collection of war speeches thunders that “we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” That truth, the Chief Justice writes, is more than enough “to ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.” National Park Service is hardly the first time Chief Justice Roberts has joined his court’s liberals on a matter of high consequence. In NFIB v. Sebelius, from 2012 — on a more evenly divided court — he wrote the decision upholding Obamacare. In DHS v. Regents of the University of California in 2020, he provided the decisive vote to a holding that Mr. Trump’s effort to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was illegal. Chief Justice Robers also would not have gone as far as the conservative majority in dismantling Roe v. Wade. In recent years, though, Chief Justice Roberts has often joined with Justice Amy Coney Barrett to form something of a swing vote within the court’s conservative bloc. The two joined with the liberals in 2024 to thwart Mr. Trump’s effort to delay his sentencing in New York’s hush money case to 2029. The two justices also swung left to ensure that the Trump Administration could not freeze some $2 billion that had been earmarked for foreign aid. Justice Samuel Alito called himself “stunned” by that ruling.The Chief Justice also wrote for the court earlier this year in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which held that some of Mr. Trump’s tariffs exceeded the remit given to the president by Congress under a 1977 law providing him with the authority to regulate commerce during national emergencies. That prompted Mr. Trump to declare that “I’m ashamed of certain members of the court. Absolutely ashamed for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country.” Chief Justice Roberts’s objections in National Park Service to Mr. Trump’s renovation stands in stark contrast to the justice’s consistent championing of presidential power. In Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020), he wrote for the majority that the president possesses the power to fire principal officers, an extension of a similar decision from 2010, Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB. In Trump v. United States, decided in 2024, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that landmark opinion that presidents possess broad criminal immunity for official acts, which are presumptively protected from prosecution. That dealt a body blow to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s push to prosecute Mr. Trump for election interference in the wake of the 2020 election.

Chief Justice Roberts Abandons Court’s Conservatives and Stakes Independence From President Whose Power He Amplified

Chief Justice Roberts Abandons Court’s Conservatives and Stakes Independence From President Whose Power He Amplified

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