Photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images News / Getty Images
A federal judge has temporarily halted the removal of a Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetary in Virginia. Over the weekend, a judge in the District of Columbia ruled that the statue could be taken down, and work crews began blocking off the site.
Just a few hours after they began dismantling the monument on Monday (December 18), a judge from the Eastern District of Virginia granted a temporary restraining order to a group called Defend Arlington.
“Plaintiffs have alleged that, in addition to the removal of the Memorial, Defendants have failed to take care of the gravesites surrounding the Memorial as the process of removal is underway,” U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. wrote.
The Defense Department ordered the monument, which was built in 1914, to be taken down as part of an effort to remove Confederate imagery and symbols across the country.
The monument has been criticized by many groups, including the Arlington National Cemetary, which says the monument symbolized a “mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
Officials said that if the monument is taken down, it would be placed in storage. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who opposes the removal, said he has a plan for the Virginia Military Institute to take the statue and move it to the Virginia Museum of the Civil War.