WASHINGTON — The Arlington County, Virginia, council filed a lawsuit Thursday against the construction of the Arc de Triomphe, becoming the first government agency to file a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s proposed monument.
The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, criticized how quickly the planned Memorial Circle project had moved forward without going through the full review process.
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“The National Park Service, the agency responsible for projects on national park lands such as Memorial Circle, is moving full speed ahead with construction that disturbs the land,” the lawsuit says. “Although the agency has claimed that a final decision to build the Ark has not yet been made and claims to be engaged in a routine decision-making process, this rushed process appears to be a pretext intended to justify the construction of the Ark in accordance with the President’s repeated orders.”
The lawsuit requests that the agency’s “feverish pace toward construction of the ark” be halted to ensure that the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act are met and that appropriate analysis and testing is conducted. “The Arlington County Council filed this lawsuit because our community has the most to lose from this egregious and illegal project,” Arlington County Council Chairman Matt de Ferranti said in a statement. He added that the county acted in good faith in the review process, highlighting the “serious, unique and far-reaching negative impacts” the project will have on the county and its residents, only to have them ignored.
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Memorial Circle is in federal parkland west of the Potomac River, across the Memorial Bridge and immediately adjacent to Arlington County.
The county is represented in the lawsuit by the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward.
White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the Trump administration and the White House “have scrupulously complied with all procedural and legal requirements and are confident that this dilatory and baseless lawsuit will be dismissed.”
The arch will become one of the most iconic monuments in the world, he added. “This will enhance the visitor experience at Arlington National Cemetery for veterans, families of the fallen and all Americans.”
The lawsuit came a day after Association of Flight Attendants-CWA President Sara Nelson expressed concerns that the 250-foot (76-meter) arch would exacerbate multiple safety issues that she said have not been addressed since a deadly January 2025 crash over the Potomac River that killed 67 people. Nelson also criticized Trump’s plan to transform the ark into “a premier military complex” capable of housing drones and snipers while storing munitions.
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Although the arch received early approval from the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, whose members were all lobbied by Trump, a group of three veterans and an architectural historian filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., arguing that the project needed to be approved by Congress. The judge in that lawsuit said the administration must give the court 48 hours before undertaking any activities related to or in preparation for the construction of the arch.
The arch is one of several projects around Washington that Trump has undertaken as he remakes the city, from renovating one of its famous public golf courses to threatening the demolition of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
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