A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the White House to continue construction on a $400 million ballroom project as lawsuits play out, a win for President Donald Trump as he flexes unprecedented executive power and remakes the capital in his image.

The apparent 5-4 decision replaces a temporary order issued earlier this month, shortly before a court-ordered halt would have gone into effect.

That temporary order was signed by Chief Justice John Roberts, assigned to handle appeals from the capital. But he publicly disagreed with the latest decision, writing a strong dissent that said the project is likely unlawful because it hasn't been approved by Congress.

“Today's decision is no victory for the separation of powers,” Roberts wrote. The court's three liberal-leaning justices agreed.

The majority, on the other hand, found the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely did not have the legal right to challenge the project.

The unsigned order pointed to government arguments that the ballroom would address national security concerns by shielding a planned underground military installation and offering a more secure structure for large events than the tents currently used.

By contrast, “the only harm the Trust claims is the offense one of its members will suffer from having to view a structure of the ‘scale,’ ‘height,’ and ‘massing’ the government intends,” it states.

Trump applauded the decision, writing in a social media post, “I am pleased to report that the United States Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of the Ballroom/Military Complex being built without any further contingency, doubt, or threat.”

The majority's order did not directly decide the legality of the project, and the suit will return to lower courts. Documents filed in the case, though, say that key portions of the project could be complete within months — a quick timeline compared with a typical legal case.

The trust's president and CEO, Brent Leggs, said the group was disappointed with the decision but pleased with Roberts' dissent. “This is not the final decision on the merits of our case and does not resolve our fundamental argument — that each President is a temporary steward of the People's House and does not have the unilateral authority to demolish and redesign it without the approval of Congress,” he said in a statement.

The Trump administration asked the justices to intervene after federal courts found the project must halt because it didn't have congressional approval.

The lawsuit from the trust argued that Trump has no unilateral authority to undertake the work, which has included demolishing the East Wing. The group's lawyers accused the White House of trying to “outrun the courts” by accelerating construction.

In lower courts, the administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings.

Civil rights advocates on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, teeing up a potential new test of state-sponsored religious expression in classrooms.

Posters featuring the Ten Commandments began going up almost a year ago in classrooms across Texas, which educates about 5.5 million students. An appeals court earlier this year cleared the way for Texas’ law and one in Louisiana, and similar laws have been passed in Arkansas and Alabama.

“This is an issue of nationwide importance because a number of states have been considering these laws in recent years,” said Heather Weaver, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Over two dozen Texas families represented by the ACLU and other groups petitioned the nation’s highest court to hear their challenge after the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April upheld the Texas law in a 9-8 ruling.

“We would like for the Supreme Court to make clear that singling out Scripture for display in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment,” Weaver said.

The office for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately comment Monday.

In the families’ Supreme Court brief, their attorneys argue that the law violates basic First Amendment principles governing the separation of church and state.

“The question of whether a state may impose scripture on impressionable, captive-audience children — for nearly every hour of every school day, for up to (13) years — implicates the most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment and our Nation’s highest ideals,” they wrote.

The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit reversed lower federal court rulings that had blocked some Texas school districts from putting up the posters.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, which took effect last September. Because Texas’ law only requires districts to hang the Ten Commandments if they are donated, conservative groups and individuals began dropping off boxes of posters at campuses across the state as the school year began last year.

“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin,” the 5th Circuit’s ruling says.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.

Right-leaning legal activists along with Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company have brought sweeping challenges against a cornerstone of legal enforcement in the United States: the right of private groups, people and local governments to sue over violations of many major laws.

Their argument, supported by the Trump administration, is that the Constitution reserves tremendous power for the president and federal agencies to decide how — or whether at all — to enforce federal law. They contend Congress should never have handed that power to others through so-called citizen suits that are part of environmental, campaign finance and certain other laws.

Environmentalists say it would be devastating to lose this essential, decades-old tool that is used to impose fines and halt lawbreaking by bad actors. Citizen suits, for example, have extracted millions from heavily polluting oil and gas operations, and ensured that lead pipes in Flint, Michigan, would be removed after its water crisis.

Legal experts say four pending federal cases — one of them filed last week — are moving forward at a time when the conservative majority on the Supreme Court gives opponents of citizen suits a greater chance than ever of success. The hard part for those opponents now is winning early federal cases and creating disagreement between the country’s appeals courts, which may help convince the Supreme Court the issue is important enough for a nationwide ruling.

Back in 2000, a Supreme Court opinion opened the door for that possibility.

“Many of us who worked in this area have been waiting basically 26 years for this shoe to drop,” said Richard Lazarus, a Harvard professor with decades of experience in environmental law.

Lazarus was referring to former moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s comments in a Clean Water Act case that citizen suits raised “difficult and fundamental” questions about whether they improperly dilute executive power. The late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a dissenting opinion in the same case that citizen suits turn “over to private citizens the function of enforcing the law.” He avoided explicitly saying they were constitutional.

“The court is more like Scalia’s court since he died than it ever was when he was there,” said Lazarus.

He observed that those who lost cases where Scalia dissented are rushing back to today’s court hoping for a more favorable result.

The critical issue for citizen suits is who — the government or private citizens — collects fines and has control. A person filing a citizen suit must tell the government ahead of time. The government can stop the suit if it sufficiently pursues the case itself, but its options are limited and the person suing can stay involved. Citizen suits can force compliance with the law and result in fines, which go to the U.S. Treasury.