Lawsuit Targets Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes Over National Mall Rules
A coalition of preservation and cultural groups has gone to court to block Donald Trump’s proposed National Garden of American Heroes, arguing that the project cannot be built in West Potomac Park without congressional approval. The lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says the planned sculpture garden would run afoul of federal rules governing new commemorative works on the National Mall.
The suit names National Park Service and Interior Department officials as defendants and was brought by six organizations plus one Washington resident. At the center of the dispute is a project that would feature roughly 250 Americans, from historical figures to artists and public figures, on a tract connected to the National Mall. Trump first mentioned the idea in July 2020, during his first term, and the project has since advanced through federal planning channels.
The plaintiffs argue that the Commemorative Works Act requires congressional approval before new additions can be placed on this protected landscape. West Potomac Park, which sits along the Potomac River near the Jefferson Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, is among the most tightly regulated federal sites in the District. The law also sets a 25-year threshold for commemorative projects tied to an individual’s death or a group’s last surviving member, a provision that complicates the inclusion of some figures previously listed by Trump officials, including Kobe Bryant, Whitney Houston, and former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Federal funding has already been committed. Congress appropriated $40 million last year to purchase statues, and agencies have allocated additional millions through the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2025, the National Endowment for the Humanities launched a grant program for the design and creation of a sculpture garden with 250 life-size statues of “great individuals from America’s past.”
The White House has said the garden would comply with “all legal requirements and approvals,” though officials have not said whether they intend to seek congressional authorization. For preservation advocates, the case is about more than one monument: it is a test of how far a president can reshape one of Washington’s most closely guarded public landscapes without legislative consent.
