A federal judge on Friday cleared the way for the UFC Freedom 250 event to proceed at the White House and Lincoln Memorial this weekend, rejecting a last-minute court challenge just days before the high-profile event.
Background
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta, an Obama appointee, denied an emergency request by two Washington-area residents to halt the mixed martial arts showdown, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue in the first place and had not demonstrated a sufficient injury.
The lawsuit challenged plans for ‘UFC Freedom 250,’ a mixed martial arts event tied to celebrations surrounding the nation’s 250th anniversary. The event includes a June 12 news conference and fighter face-offs at the Lincoln Memorial and a June 14 fight card on the White House South Lawn. It is expected to bring thousands of viewers.
Ruling
Mehta did not decide whether any of the claims were legally valid. Instead, he determined that the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries were largely aesthetic and emotional in nature and did not demonstrate the kind of concrete, personal harm required under Article III of the Constitution.
The plaintiffs had described the massive UFC staging structure known as ‘The Claw’ as visually offensive and argued that the ‘unauthorized, commercial exploitation of the national monuments caused harm.’ Mehta rejected this notion, writing that ‘general emotional harm, no matter how deeply felt, cannot suffice for injury-in-fact for standing purposes.’
Citing precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court, Mehta wrote that a threatened injury must be ‘certainly impending’ to qualify as an injury in fact. He found that one plaintiff’s assertions that he might encounter the event while driving for work were too speculative, while the other plaintiff’s plans to attend protests near the sites did not fit within traditional aesthetic-injury cases.
Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
