The Department of Justice has filed a brief — a formal, footnoted, counsel-reviewed brief — arguing that a mixed martial arts event scheduled for the South Lawn of the White House cannot be enjoined because, and here I want to make sure I have this right, the caterers have probably already confirmed.
The legal theory, as I understand it, is laches: the doctrine holding that if you wait too long to object to something, a court may decline to stop it. It is a venerable principle. It has protected property rights, settled estates, resolved genuine disputes about land and inheritance. Its first application to a cage fight on federal ceremonial grounds is, I am told, a proud new chapter.
Now, laches requires that the delay be unreasonable. The administration's position appears to be that objecting to a White House UFC event at any point before the octagon was bolted to the Rose Garden flagstones constituted reasonable notice, and everything after that is just people being difficult. This is a coherent position. It is also the exact argument anyone has ever made while setting up folding chairs somewhere they should not be setting up folding chairs.
Consider what the brief implicitly establishes. It does not argue the event is appropriate. It does not argue the South Lawn is a traditional venue for bouts decided by submission hold. It argues, with the full institutional weight of the United States Department of Justice, that there is simply no longer enough time to stop it. The government's legal defense of a cage fight is that the cage fight is imminent. As defenses go, this one has a certain momentum to it.
The White House, of course, has hosted state dinners, treaty signings, press briefings, the occasional constitutional crisis — all of which were also, at some point, imminent, and all of which were presumably defended on stronger grounds than scheduling constraints. But a scheduling constraint is a scheduling constraint, and the law is the law, and the octagon is, by now, probably already assembled.
I would argue this sets a dangerous precedent, except the precedent requires you to act quickly, and clearly nobody around here does that.