John Roberts draws a line with Trump — over history

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst

(CNN) — “The White House is not just any building.”

So said Chief Justice John Roberts, who has often deferred to Donald Trump’s executive authority, but on Monday separated himself from the president and fellow Supreme Court conservatives to protest the colossal ballroom project.

It was a rare dissent and remarkable break for the chief justice who has penned some of the most important opinions backing Trump, including the 2024 grant of immunity from criminal prosecution and last June’s decision giving him power to fire the heads of independent agencies.

Still, the rhetoric was vintage Roberts.

His six-page dissenting statement was laced with regard for history and architecture in the nation’s capital. He quoted Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill as he extolled the value of iconic structures.

“‘We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us,’” Roberts wrote, lifting a page from a 1943 Churchill war speech.

To that, the chief justice added, “All the more reason to ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”

Roberts, who regularly tells audiences that he once intended to pursue a history Ph.D. rather than law degree at Harvard, touted the symbolism of Washington’s historic architecture.

He observed that when Roosevelt in 1902 thanked Congress for the appropriations for the additions of the East and West wings, Roosevelt referred to “the stately simplicity” of the original architecture and the importance of preserving “such buildings as historic monuments which keep alive our sense of continuing with the Nation’s past.”

Throughout his opinion, the chief justice, who often shows pride in the Supreme Court’s columned building, demonstrated his own regard for the aesthetic of the White House structure. (The court did not have its own building until 1935, more than a century after the construction of the White House and US Capitol.)

Yet, Roberts’ position failed to make a difference and was costless, at least to Trump. Roberts’ five conservative colleagues had a majority to allow the president to continue the ballroom construction that has been underway for nearly a year and nearing completion.

Still, Roberts’ statement Monday adds another dimension to the chief’s record as he has confronted Trump’s audacious second-term agenda. The Trump cases have dominated the court’s docket and will contribute to Roberts’ own legacy.

While Roberts has greenlit many of Trump’s policies, he voted last session against two of the most extreme: the sweeping tariffs imposed on foreign goods without congressional approval, and the attempt to limit birthright citizenship, a centuries-old practice that entitles any child born in the US to American citizenship.

Monday’s case invoking American history also serves as a reminder of Roberts’ position as chancellor of the Smithsonian Institution. The role is largely ceremonial, by virtue of his role as chief justice, yet he has overseen Smithsonian board meetings and witnessed the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to reshape the nation’s major public museums.

Trump’s drive to transform the look of Washington in his image has included his move to inscribe his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and to build a triumphal 250-foot arch. The arch is planned for the traffic circle between the Arlington National Cemetery entrance and the Lincoln Memorial.

The case was brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It contended that demolition of the East Wing and the construction of 90,000 square-foot ballroom and security structure required congressional approval.

Lower federal courts preliminarily sided with the Trust and let the case proceed. Judges found that the Trust had “standing” to sue because it had demonstrated a significant injury. The Trust pointed to a long-time Trust leader and member, Alison Hoagland, an architectural historian, who claimed her enjoyment of the White House had been harmed.

The high court majority declared her grounds insufficient, writing “mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury” to sue. The majority issued the opinion, per curiam, Latin for “by the court,” as happens in such appeals that come to its emergency docket. None of those justices (Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) signed any separate opinion.

To Roberts, there was nothing meager about Hoagland’s claim. (Joining his opinion were liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.)

The chief justice emphasized her architectural credentials as he observed, “The White House is not just any building, and – when it comes to historic preservation – Hoagland is not just any person.”

He noted that past court cases have found an injury when “esthetic interests” were asserted. He referred to a 1992 precedent in which, as Roberts described it, with lines from that prior case, “a desire to … observe an animal species like a particular crocodile, even for purely esthetic purposes was undeniably a cognizable interest for purposes of standing.”

As for the case at hand, Roberts declared, “A historic preservationist such as Hoagland can be aesthetically injured in a concrete, particularized way by the transformation of a historic building that she frequently enjoys, just as an environmentalist can sustain a concrete, particularized aesthetic injury from the extinction of a particular animal or the transformation of a particular forest or river that he regularly enjoys.”

Monday’s case turned on the standing issue alone – the majority said it was not ruling on the lawfulness of the ballroom project itself – but Roberts made clear his view of the entire enterprise.

He observed at the outset that Congress had explicitly prohibited construction on such federal property “without express authority of Congress.”

“That construction is likely unlawful,” he said, declaring that the usual appropriation for White House maintenance “likely does not authorize the President to use hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations to tear down the East Wing and construct a ballroom in its stead.”

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