The Vietnam veterans who sued the Trump administration over plans to build a triumphal arch in Washington on Friday asked a judge to block construction.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced Thursday the administration would break ground despite the ongoing lawsuit over the case.
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"The imminent course of action that Secretary Burgum has announced to the American people is unlawful many times over," the plaintiffs, three Vietnam veterans and an art historian, said in their request for a restraining order from Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The plaintiffs have argued the construction would disrupt views between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. They pointed to federal laws, including one disallowing buildings to go up on federal land in D.C. without federal approval, and another specifically requiring Congress to authorize construction in the area where Trump wants the arch.
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But the Trump administration has been emboldened by the Supreme Court's decision to throw out a case against Trump's ballroom construction, which had essentially the same legal problem, because five Republican justices reckoned the plaintiffs in the ballroom case didn't have legal standing to sue. The Justice Department told the court on Thursday the Vietnam veterans' case has the same standing problem.
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Chutkan previously said, in an April order, the administration couldn't break ground without first providing two weeks' notice on its website and to the court itself, which it has not done.
"What I do not want is for ground to be broken while this case is pending," Chutkan said during a hearing that month.
Spokespeople for the White House and the Interior Department did not respond to a request for comment.
A major difference between the ballroom case and the arch case is that the plaintiffs sued over the arch before construction had begun, whereas Trump's surprise demolition of the East Wing of the White House prompted a lawsuit after the fact. They told Chutkan on Friday she should not allow the government "to blaze ahead with an unlawful course of conduct in the hope that they can render the arch a fait accompli before this Court has had the chance to reach a final determination as to whether Defendants' project is authorized by law."
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Burgum argued on social media, as the Justice Department has in court, that Congress already authorized the arch in the early 1900s, regardless of the more restrictive statutes lawmakers have put in place more recently.
There's virtually no chance lawmakers will authorize a giant arch to help Trump in his Washington redecorating spree. Senate Republicans rejected funding for the White House ballroom earlier this year.
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