E-Paper
Trump administration can’t close D.C. Golf Course for now, judge rules
Officials hoped to shutter the course starting Sunday, but groups challenged plans to transform the public site into a championship-level course
Prefer HTon Google
A federal judge late Saturday temporarily barred the Trump administration from closing a Washington, D.C. public golf course to begin work on an extensive overhaul that the president has touted, preventing for now a push to transform the links into a championship-level venue.
Judge Ana Reyes in Washington handed down the ruling on the eve of the planned closure, finding that the Trump administration’s stated reasons for shuttering the site were “pretextual.” Reyes, a Biden appointee, also found that the Trump administration had failed to give adequate notice to proceed, but she stopped short of requiring the administration to continue operating the property for golf.
Her order blocking the course’s closure is set to last through Nov. 28.
“The Department of the Interior has progressed from removing the trees to removing the people from East Potomac Park,” she wrote in the opening line of her 30-page opinion.
Trump said in a Truth Social post last month that the East Potomac Golf Links would be closed to play for about 15 months, beginning Nov. 15, so the overhaul could begin. The development would be spearheaded by the Interior Department, led by Doug Burgum, and designed by golf course architect Tom Fazio, he said.
In her ruling, Reyes said the administration likely violated administrative and environmental law in its “haste to meet an arbitrary deadline.” If an imminent threat to the public requires closure of a part of the site, she ruled, the government may restrict the area immediately around the hazard but needs to notify her within 24 hours.
Trump, an avid golfer, said the revamp would produce a top-tier course that is both open to the public and able to host major golf tournaments. He described the course as currently being in “very poor condition,” pointing in particular to a “collapsing and hazardous sea wall.”
The golf course is among several of the president’s pet construction projects to get tied up in legal proceedings. The DC Preservation League and two local golfers who brought the lawsuit contend that Trump’s plans would irreparably alter the landscape and character of a historic course long known for being publicly accessible and affordable. Their lawsuit alleges the administration exceeded its authority and skirted required reviews in moving to remake the course.
Reyes had ordered the administration to provide written notice at least 10 business days before it closes the golf course, in whole or in part, and before it makes any “irreversible modification to any forms or features of East Potomac Park.” She did so after finding that the government had been moving to advance the president’s vision for the course while passing it off as routine maintenance.
Reyes has sharply questioned the government’s candor in defending the planned work. The judge wrote in an earlier ruling that Trump’s public pronouncements about the course—including that work would begin “IMMEDIATELY”— flew in the face of government officials’ assurances in court that no long-term plan had been finalized.
Reyes previously said she plans to appoint an outside lawyer, Jessie Liu, to probe whether attorneys at the Justice Department or Interior Department misled the court about the administration’s plans for the course and “committed ethics violations.” Liu led the largest U.S. attorney’s office in the country as the top federal prosecutor in Washington under the first Trump administration.
Write to C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com and Lydia Wheeler at lydia.wheeler@wsj.com
