As officers sue over Jan. 6 plaque, Democrats hang replicas

WASHINGTON — Two officers who protected the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack are turning to the courts to try to compel the installation of an overdue plaque honoring law enforcement.

The lawsuit, filed by former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn and current Metropolitan Police officer Daniel Hodges, argues that failure to place the plaque violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

“By refusing to follow the law and honor officers as it is required to do, Congress encourages (the) rewriting of history. It suggests that the officers are not worthy of being recognized, because Congress refuses to recognize them,” states the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and names Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin as the defendant.

It comes as Democratic lawmakers are ramping up pressure on their Republican colleagues to install the plaque, which according to statute should have been up on the West Front of the Capitol no later than March 2023.

Last month during National Police Week, meant to honor law enforcement and remember fallen officers, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and other Democrats took to the House floor to urge its placement and call out their Republican colleagues, who they said have refused to hang the plaque despite the fact that it is finished and in storage on the Capitol campus.

A week later, Rep. Joseph D. Morelle, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, which has oversight of the Capitol campus, unveiled a replica of the plaque hung outside his office in the Cannon House Office Building.

“The Republicans refuse to do it, but I’m going to display it here outside my office. … If you’re here in Washington, come by and see it. This is the way to thank people for defending our Capitol and defending our democracy,” the New York Democrat said in a video posted to the social platform X at the time.

Morelle on Thursday joined Reps. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Jim McGovern, D-Mass., in circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter calling out Johnson and announcing that poster replicas would be sent to House Democrats. It urges members to hang the replicas outside their offices.

“If you’re frustrated, like we are, with this embarrassing violation of law and spectacular disregard for the valor, honor and sacrifice of our police officers who responded on that day, please join us by displaying a poster replica of the plaque outside of your office,” the lawmakers wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Roll Call.

A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson, who Democrats have blamed for the delay, did not respond to a request for comment and has not previously indicated whether or when the plaque might be hung. A spokesperson for the Architect of the Capitol also did not respond to a request for comment.

Austin, at an April House appropriations subcommittee hearing, said that he had not yet received instructions from Johnson to install the plaque.

Language authorizing the plaque landed in the fiscal 2022 omnibus spending bill, mandating that the memorial be displayed on the West Front within one year of enactment, a deadline Congress has long since blown past.

According to the law, the plaque was supposed to list the names of officers who responded on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump assaulted police and flooded the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The finished plaque, as seen in the poster replica, does not list individual officers, but instead features the names of law enforcement agencies. It bears an image of the west side of the Capitol with the words: “On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

Dunn and Hodges, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, are represented by Brendan Ballou, a former lawyer at the Department of Justice who helped prosecute Capitol rioters.

They are part of a small, outspoken group of officers who have regularly shared their experiences of the attack. Dunn ran for Congress in Maryland’s 3rd District last year but lost in the Democratic primary.

Both “live with psychic injuries from that day, compounded by their government’s refusal to recognize their service,” according to the lawsuit. Hodges suffered a concussion and is known for a video clip that circulated in the wake of the attack in which he’s seen wedged between a door frame and a police shield that was stolen by the mob. He screams for help as he and other outnumbered officers try to stop a swarm of rioters from entering the Capitol. More than 140 police officers were injured in the attack, according to the lawsuit.

The efforts of those officers to protect the Capitol that day have been “submerged and suppressed by Speaker Johnson and Donald Trump,” Raskin said Thursday during a livestream on X with Dunn and Hodges.

Raskin, who is ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, noted Trump’s sweeping pardons of rioters convicted in the attack, as well as the Department of Justice’s recent $5 million settlement in a wrongful death case brought by the family of Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt.

“There’s this complete, topsy-turvy, moral inversion of the whole thing. There’s this attempt to rewrite the history of what happened that day,” Raskin said.

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