The family of Elaine Harmon, a female World War II veteran, is clashing with Arlington National Cemetery after it rejected their application to have Harmon’s ashes interned there.

Harmon was one of 1,000 female pilots that served in the Army’s Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs). Like many all-female military groups during that era, WASPs did not see direct combat. Instead they flew supplies across long distances and trained male pilots for the Army.

Before dying last year at the ripe age of 95, Harmon wrote a letter to her family expressing her wish to have her ashes interned at the famous cemetery. However, her family discovered that WASPs were ineligible to be buried there.

Tiffany Miller, Harmon’s granddaughter, started a Change.org petition to pressure the cemetery into allowing all WASPs to choose Arlington as their final resting place.

“The WASPs were the first American women trained to fly military aircraft,” Miller wrote. “They answered their country’s call at a time of dire need. They fought for decades to gain recognition. Their service and hard work should afford them the right to be buried alongside other veterans.”

Arlington National Cemetery responded with a long letter explaining their reasoning for denying WASPs this right. It apparently comes down to space and policy.

“The service of Women Air Force Service Pilots during World War II is highly commendable and, while certainly worthy of recognition, it does not, in itself, reach the level of Active Duty service required for internment at Arlington National Cemetery,” the cemetery wrote on its official Facebook page.

The post continues to explain that all military-related groups from WWII were declared active-duty troops by the Department of Veterans Affairs in order to make sure all Americans who contributed to the war effort would receive benefits. However, Arlington National Cemetery is not administered by the VA and thus not beholden to this policy.

Moreover, the cemetery has no choice but to be selective about who gets a plot on its hallowed land. There is a finite amount of space at the cemetery, and it will probably be full by the mid 2030s.

UPDATE: Thanks to recent legislature, Harmon posthumously got her wish, and was finally laid to rest at Arlington.