Subject: Re: The ballroom, another Trump FAIL
As I said this stoppage should have happened from the get go.

How? That the project should have been stopped before the Administration even had developed plans for the new structure (which only were released in February)? Or before even the first meeting of any governmental body to consider those plans (the NCPC didn't review them until March)?

That's not how courts work. If the Administration announces that they have "plans" for a new ballroom, you can't just go into court and ask a judge to "stop" that based on an announcement. There needs to be actual government action that you are asking the judge to enjoin, and a material step being taken by the government in furtherance of that action before the judge can step in. There has to be the prospect of "irreparable harm."

The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in December - months before the Ballroom even had final design plans. They requested an injunction at that time. The judge refrained from granting that request for a preliminary injunction because the government told them that the project wasn't close to moving forward yet:

Finally, the Court takes seriously the Government's representations that its plans are not yet final, that it will commence consultations with the NCPC and CFA by the end of this month, and that no above-grade construction will take place before April 2026. If there is any below-grade construction that dictates the size or scale of the proposed ballroom before the Court can act on plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction, then the Government should be prepared to take it down depending on the Court's resolution of the merits of this case.

https://cdn.savingplaces.org/2...

IOW, the reason that the court didn't rule on the injunction in December is because the government told the court it was premature for them to rule on it. Once the plans were finalized, and they did conduct those consultations with the NCPC and CFA (which happened in March), the matter was finally ripe for a ruling on the request for preliminary injunction.