Background: The plaque designed to commemorate the law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol and those inside during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection (House Homeland Security Committee). Inset: Then-Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, right, speaks during her swearing in ceremony, Wednesday, May 28, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
The Trump administration argues that the plaque intended to commemorate the law enforcement officers who safeguarded the Capitol on January 6 is flawed, and thus, a lawsuit demanding its installation should be dismissed.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) contends that U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police officer Daniel Hodges cannot demonstrate any injury from the plaque’s absence. Moreover, even if they could, simply installing the plaque would not address their grievances, as outlined in a 12-page motion to dismiss submitted on Tuesday.
In March 2022, legislation was passed by Congress to create a plaque honoring officers who “valiantly protected the United States Capitol, Members of Congress, and staff on January 6, 2021,” as the filing details. The plaque was to be given to the Architect of the Capitol for placement at a “permanent location on the western front of the United States Capitol.”
Despite being crafted, the plaque remains uninstalled over three years later. Dunn and Hodges initiated a lawsuit in June to compel its installation, claiming that the government’s failure to acknowledge their service exacerbates their suffering, which includes receiving death threats.
The DOJ, however, identifies several issues with their legal challenge.
“The plaintiffs argue that the Architect has not adhered to the Act since the plaque has not been placed on the Capitol’s western wall within the timeline required by the statute,” the DOJ states. “Yet, even if the Court assumes a breach of the statute for evaluating standing, the plaintiffs must still convincingly demonstrate that they have suffered tangible harm, that this harm is directly linked to the alleged statutory violation, and that their harm would be remedied by the statute’s compliance.”
“Here, Plaintiffs have failed to plausibly plead concrete harm to them due to the Architect’s alleged non-compliance with the statute,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro writes in the motion.
Even if the court were able to find standing that the alleged harms were real, it would not be able to tie them to the Architect’s actions, Pirro continues. “Plaintiffs have not alleged facts that could raise a plausible inference that these alleged harms would cease or be materially reduced were an honorific plaque installed.”
Furthermore, the men have shown nothing “that would allow the Court to plausibly infer that the further act of installing an honorific plaque would ameliorate any of their alleged harms which either arose from the events of January 6, 2021, or flow from the subsequent independent acts of parties not before the Court,” the filing states.
Not only have Dunn and Hodges not shown signs of having suffered harm due to the memorial not being hung, but the commemorative marker itself is not in line with what Congress directed, the DOJ maintains. “As stated in the Complaint, the Architect testified before the House Appropriations subcommittee on April 8, 2025, and during this testimony the status of the plaque was raised,” the department recounts.
The plaque lists roughly 20 law enforcement entities instead of the approximately 3,648 “individual names of law enforcement personnel” given to the Architect of the Capitol, according to the filing. “Thus, the plaque referenced in that testimony is not the plaque directed by the statute.”
The memorial has become a source of contention between various groups in and around Washington, D.C. Dunn and Hodges accused the Trump administration of purposefully declining to hang the plaque, arguing that by doing so, it is encouraging “this rewriting of history.”
Roughly two weeks later, multiple Jan. 6 defendants asked that the honorary plaque also “recognize the experiences” of the over 1,500 defendants in the insurrection. Dunn and Hodges’ lawyers promptly responded by arguing these defendants “have no plausible claim” and that their intervention would be a legally baseless sideshow that would only tend to “cause unnecessary delay and prejudice.”
