Nine members of the Kennedy family asked a federal judge today (Tuesday) to block President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot arch in Memorial Circle, saying it would cast a shadow over their relatives’ graves at Arlington National Cemetery.
The shadow would “fundamentally alter the experience of visiting the gravesites,” the relatives argued. They filed a motion to intervene in two existing lawsuits seeking to block construction of the arch.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last week barred the Trump administration from breaking ground on the structure for 14 days, hours after the National Capital Planning Commission gave the project final approval.
The nine family members are children and grandchildren of Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, brothers of the slain President John F. Kennedy who both served in the U.S. Senate. They are buried close to the eternal flame that marks JFK’s grave, a trio of memorials that are a major draw for the millions of people who visit the cemetery each year.
Building the arch would be a “permanent denigration” of the gravesites, and the Kennedy offspring “would never again be able to appreciate both sites as they always have before, and as the Kennedy family always intended,” lawyers for the relatives wrote. They are represented by veteran Washington lawyer Norm Eisen and Democracy Defenders Fund.
The arch’s shadow would touch burial sites in the cemetery on 284 days a year and briefly fall on Kennedy’s eternal flame on 18 of them, passing over more than 75,000 graves in all, according to a Washington Post analysis last month. A National Park Service assessment found this summer that the arch would also block sightlines from the Kennedy gravesite and Arlington House, the New York Times reported.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s health and human services secretary, who has a fractured relationship with many of his relatives, did not join the lawsuit.
The Kennedy relatives join a growing list of opponents in court. Three veterans and an architectural historian filed the first lawsuit against the arch, and Virginia and D.C. sued last month. The Arlington County Board has its own lawsuit pending in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The White House last week unveiled a website showcasing the arch, which is slated to rise in gold ornamentation and gray granite between the Lincoln Memorial and the cemetery. The site says the arch’s columns would store munitions and that space would be set aside for snipers.
The arch is one of several projects around Washington that the Republican president has undertaken as he alters the capital to his tastes, from renovating the East Potomac golf course to threatening to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Those projects could face intense scrutiny after Democrats gained control of Congress in last week’s midterm elections.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
