A federal judge this Friday authorized the American president to celebrate his 80th birthday and the country’s 250th birthday this weekend with UFC fights in a ring already set up on the South Lawn of the White House.
District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling allows organizers to use the White House lawn as a venue for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts event planned for Sunday.
Mehta concluded that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed to ban the event likely lack standing to challenge it and have failed to prove that they would suffer irreparable harm if the event proceeded as planned.
The judge also pointed out the “unjustified delay” of the plaintiffs to contest an event that has been planned for months.
“In the context of an urgent request — and considering that the date of the UFC fight had been known for a long time — it is fair to say that the plaintiffs unjustifiably delayed the filing of the lawsuit, weakening their claims of irreparable harm,” the judge wrote.
Lawyers for the nonprofit Public Integrity Project filed a lawsuit to challenge the event “UFC Freedom 250”by Donald Trump, on behalf of an activist and a Vietnam War veteran.
The two plaintiffs also asked the court to stop organizers from installing any type of structure for the event on the White House grounds, including a 28-foot-tall, 600-ton steel structure called The Claw.
The “cosmetic damages” invoked by the plaintiffs, the judge noted, are temporary, since The Claw will be dismantled starting Monday morning and the stage equipment at the Lincoln Memorial will have to be removed before then.”
“The president’s comments about Garra’s stay do not change the situation, given the clear statement from a White House official,” the judge wrote.
The White House has called the court case a baseless attempt to block Trump from holding an event that is no different from many others routinely held in public forums in the nation’s capital.
The Trump Administration cannot issue tickets to sporting events on the South Lawn of the White House or at the Lincoln Memorial, where UFC fighters planned to hold a press conference for fans today, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who argued that it was a private, for-profit commercial initiative with VIP packages costing millions of dollars.
“President Trump’s Government is granting the UFC an extraordinary business opportunity that it legally cannot grant and, in return, the UFC is holding an event in which its management, fighters, advertisers and various celebrities will pay tribute to the President on his birthday”, maintained lawyers from the Public Integrity Project.
The National Park Service and the Department of the Interior are also named as defendants in the lawsuit.
In 2019, during his first presidential term (2017-2021), Donald Trump became the first sitting North American head of state to watch UFC fights. The Republican is a friend of UFC president and CEO, Dana White.
Federal judge Amit Mehta was appointed to the position by President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
Mehta presided over other cases related to Trump, including the civil case accusing him of instigating a crowd of supporters to invade the Capitol building, where the two chambers of the United States Congress operate, on January 6, 2021, when they were meeting to certify the electoral victory of the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, in the 2020 presidential election, who defeated him.
