By consolidating the stay request with the merits and setting an expedited briefing schedule, the panel effectively extends the project’s active construction window while deferring a final decision on whether the ballroom can proceed at all.

The government’s opening brief is due May 8, with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s response due May 27 and a reply by June 1. Oral argument is set for June 5 before Judges Patricia A. Millett, Neomi Rao and Bradley N. Garcia.

RELATED

Court Forces Split Construction Path on White House Ballroom

Construction Window Reopens at Critical Phase

In its April 11 order, the panel wrote that the record raises “unresolved factual questions” about whether above-grade construction is necessary to support the project’s below-ground security systems, noting the government had previously told the district court that underground work could proceed independently without locking in the ballroom’s design. 

Judges also questioned claims of irreparable harm, pointing to project timelines extending to 2028 as undercutting the argument that a near-term pause would materially increase security risk during the appeal. 

The new stay temporarily reverses the immediate effect of Leon’s April 16 order, which had barred vertical construction—including structural steel and framing—while allowing below-grade work and security-related activity to continue.

Leon wrote in that ruling that national security “is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” rejecting the administration’s argument that the ballroom and its underground systems must be built as a single, inseparable project.

The distinction is key to project delivery. Foundation systems and below-grade concrete are largely complete, according to prior ENR reporting, marking the transition to superstructure work—a phase requiring tight coordination of fabrication release, structural steel shop drawings and erection sequencing on a constrained, high-security campus.

With the injunction paused, the project again clears that threshold, allowing steel fabrication and delivery timelines to proceed without immediate disruption and reducing near-term risk of demobilization, remobilization and protection costs tied to partially completed systems.

Delays at this stage can ripple across crane scheduling, trade stacking and site access logistics that are already tightly controlled within the White House complex—raising the risk of another stop-start cycle should the panel ultimately reinstate construction limits after its June review.

RELATED

Injunction Stops White House Ballroom at Start of Vertical Construction

June Ruling Sets the Stakes for Superstructure

The June 5 oral argument arrives at a decisive construction juncture. With substructure complete and above-grade work resuming under the administrative stay, the project is committing to procurement and fabrication sequences that could be difficult and costly to reverse—structural steel shop drawings, erection contracts and crane mobilization on a high-security campus where stop-start disruption is harder to absorb than on a conventional site.

The approximately $400 million project is being privately funded, separating it from congressional appropriations but not from judicial intervention. 

A ruling that reinstates Leon’s construction limits after June 5 would force a second demobilization at the superstructure phase—the most sequencing-sensitive and cost-exposed point in vertical construction—with remobilization timelines and carrying costs compounding against a delivery schedule already shaped by security and logistical constraints unique to the White House complex.

While the panel has explicitly reserved ruling on the merits, all three judges previously wrote that they would not question the administration's purview on national security or whether halting construction could jeopardize a critical security modernization.

"This court will not gainsay the importance of ensuring the safety of the White House, the president, staff and visitors," they wrote.

What the June argument will decide is not procedural: it is whether the ballroom rises.