Washington DC and Virginia sue to block Trump’s triumphal arch, calling it “flagrantly unlawful”
The District of Columbia and Virginia have filed a joint lawsuit to halt construction of President Donald Trump’s proposed 250-foot triumphal arch, warning of irreparable harm to traffic, emergency services and the Potomac if building starts as early as next week.
The District of Columbia and the state of Virginia have filed a joint lawsuit seeking to block construction of President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch, describing the project in a 45-page complaint as “flagrantly unlawful” and “legally indefensible”. The suit, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Saturday, asks a federal court to bar building work before it starts.
The arch would stand 76 metres (250 feet) tall at Memorial Circle, between the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia — about 30 metres taller than the Statue of Liberty and twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial itself. Trump has championed the monument, modelled in spirit on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, as a centrepiece marking the country’s 250th anniversary, and White House officials have said ground could be broken as early as next week, on or around 5 November.
On Friday, the administration unveiled a 106-page proposal for the structure as a 12-storey megastructure, featuring a winged bronze statue of Lady Liberty lifting an eternal flame, two mezzanines, an observation deck with panoramic east-west views, programme spaces, offices and a fire command centre. The most recent plans to be reviewed by the National Capital Planning Commission do not include military elements, although Trump has previously said the arch would double as a military hub with snipers and drone capabilities.
The new lawsuit is brought by Attorney General Brian Schwalb of the District of Columbia and Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones. Its central argument is that the administration has not obtained the congressional authorisation the plaintiffs say is required before construction can begin, and that it has rushed approvals without adequately consulting either jurisdiction or properly weighing the project’s effects.
The complaint warns that harm would begin the moment building starts. “As soon as defendants break ground on this project, they will inflict irreparable harm on both the District and Virginia,” it says, pointing to an anticipated three-year construction period that would snarl commuter traffic between the two jurisdictions, slow emergency vehicles, generate significant pollution and send stormwater runoff into the Potomac River.
The plaintiffs also say both governments would have to take immediate and costly steps to assess, respond to and mitigate those effects, and that those costs would be severe and unrecoverable — particularly, they argue, because the administration has refused to take them into account. They further argue that the arch would disrupt the historic sightlines planned for the nation’s capital, a concern also raised by veterans’ groups who fear it would block views of Arlington National Cemetery.
Saturday’s filing brings the total number of lawsuits against the arch to three. The first came in February, when a group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian sued, arguing the structure would dishonour their service and intrude on the view between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House. Arlington County followed on 8 October, arguing the project would cause significant harm to its residents and likely require changes to nearby flight paths.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan is overseeing the earlier cases and is weighing whether to issue a preliminary injunction temporarily freezing construction plans while the arguments are heard. At a hearing on Friday she deferred an immediate ruling but signalled she would decide expeditiously, having previously ordered the administration to give the court 48 hours’ notice before undertaking any construction-related activity. She has now ordered both sides in the new case to agree a proposed briefing schedule on a motion for a temporary restraining order.
The monument has already received early approval from the US Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all appointed by Trump. NPR reported that it had reached out to both the White House and the Interior Department for comment on Saturday’s lawsuit but had not received a response, and the administration has previously defended the arch as a fitting national monument.
What happens next will be decided on a tight timetable. If the court does not intervene before the planning commission considers the designs, construction could begin within days, after which the plaintiffs warn the administration could argue — as it has with other controversial projects — that halting work already under way would pose a security risk. The lawsuit therefore asks the court to act now, arguing: “This Court should not allow this effort to escape judicial scrutiny.”
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