After the federal government demolished the White House East Wing in 2025 and began building a new East Wing with a below-ground military installation and an above-ground ballroom, the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued and obtained a preliminary injunction halting most above-ground construction, which the D.C. Circuit ultimately upheld. The government asked the Supreme Court to stay the injunction. In a per curiam decision, the Supreme Court held that the government was likely to succeed in showing that the Trust lacked Article III standing, and it granted the stay pending a petition for certiorari. The Court reasoned that the Trust relied on the aesthetic offense of a single member, a historic-architecture expert, at viewing a larger East Wing, and that mere distress at or disagreement with government action is not a concrete and particularized injury no matter how intense or expert the interest. It distinguished environmental cases in which plaintiffs lost the use of rivers or forests, and it found that the injunction likely intruded on a coordinate branch and threatened security harms described by top national security officials, which outweighed the member’s claimed injury. The Court expressly did not decide whether the East Wing project is lawful. Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, dissented, arguing that construction likely violates a statute requiring express congressional authority for buildings on federal park grounds in Washington, and that a preservationist who regularly views the White House suffers the same kind of aesthetic injury the Court has recognized for someone who wants to see a particular crocodile.