The Ballroom Dance Doesn’t Belong in Court

A ballroom. That's what ended up teed up for the Supreme Court to referee: whether Donald Trump can build one at the White House and whether Congress gets a say in how it's paid for and approved. Somewhere along the way this became a lawsuit instead of what it actually is, a fight between two branches of government over money and turf. The Court looking at that mess and saying "not our problem" isn't dodging anything. It's exactly the restraint people claim to want from judges until it's their side that wants a favorable ruling instead of a negotiated outcome.

This is the kind of dispute the Constitution already built a process for. Congress holds the purse. The White House runs its own building. When those two things rub against each other, the fix is appropriations riders, oversight letters, maybe a nasty press conference or two, not a federal case asking nine justices to decide who wins a construction argument. Turning every executive-legislative squabble into litigation trains everyone in Washington to skip the actual work of governing and go straight to court, hoping a judge bails them out of a fight they don't want to have politically.

There's also something a little absurd about the stakes here. This isn't a war powers dispute or an impeachment fight. It's a room. If Congress thinks the White House is overstepping on funding or historic preservation rules, it has tools: hold up money, hold hearings, pass a law. Those tools exist precisely so courts don't have to play interior decorator for the federal government.

The Court staying out doesn't resolve who's right about the ballroom. It just correctly refuses to let the judiciary become the tiebreaker for every disagreement Washington is too lazy or too partisan to settle itself. That's a good instinct, and more of the federal bench could stand to remember it.