Judge Orders Arlington Cemetery Confederate Monument To Stay — For Now

ARLINGTON, VA — A federal judge this week issued a temporary restraining order temporarily prohibiting the removal of the Confederate Monument in Arlington National Cemetery, according to an Associated Press report.

A group called Defend Arlington, affiliated with a group called Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed a lawsuit Sunday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, seeking the restraining order. A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday.

Work to remove the memorial began Monday before the restraining order was issued. When contacted by the Associated Press, a cemetery spokesperson said Arlington is complying with the restraining order.

Due to a federal mandate requiring all Confederate memorials to be removed or renamed, officials announced plans in March to remove the 110-year-old statue from Section 16 of the cemetery.

Unveiled in 1914, the Confederate Memorial was designed by American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel, a Confederate veteran and graduate of Virginia Military Institute. Upon his death, Ezekiel was buried near the statue.

The monument features 32 figures depicting mythical gods alongside Confederate soldiers and civilians. Two figures are Black, depicting an enslaved woman holding the infant of a white officer and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

Two of the figures are Black: One an enslaved woman holding the infant child of a white officer, and the other an enslaved man following his owner to war.

"The elaborately designed monument offers a nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery," the cemetery's website states.

The process of removing the memorial began after a Congressional committee directed the Department of Defense to remove or rename any items from federal-owned land depicting any person who voluntarily served the Confederacy. The Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery was among those items, officials said.

The secretary of defense agreed with the committee's recommendations, and the directive became law in December 2022.

In September, a spokesperson for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he plans to move the monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, stating the battlefield provides a "fitting backdrop" to the sculptor's legacy.

The cemetery had said on Friday that it expected to complete the removal this week. But the lawsuit accused the Army, which runs the cemetery, of violating regulations in seeking a hasty removal of the memorial.

“The removal will desecrate, damage, and likely destroy the Memorial longstanding at ANC as a grave marker and impede the Memorial’s eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places,” the lawsuit accuses.

The temporary restraining order issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston said that a lawyer for the plaintiffs represented to the court that the work at the memorial involves the disturbance of gravesites.

In a footnote, Alston wrote that he “takes very seriously the representations of officers of the Court and should the representations in this case be untrue or exaggerated the Court may take appropriate sanctions.”

On Friday, the cemetery had said in its statement that “the area around the Memorial will be protected to ensure no impact to the surrounding landscape and grave markers.”

Last week, a federal judge in the District of Columbia dismissed a lawsuit seeking to block removal of the memorial filed by the same plaintiffs. Alston, in his order issued Monday, told the parties to be prepared to discuss how that case affects his decision whether to extend his temporary restraining order beyond Wednesday.

David McCallister, a spokesman for the Florida heritage group, welcomed the judge’s order while acknowledging it is only temporary. He said the current case differs from the one that was dismissed because they now have evidence that the work is being done in a way that disturbs grave sites.

Generally, he said the memorial promotes reconciliation between North and South, and removing it erodes that reconciliation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.