D.C. hopes to end a legal battle with GW over campus plan restrictions before it starts.

District lawyers filed a motion June 22 requesting a summary judgement to dismiss charges that restrictions imposed when the city passed its campus plan are unconstitutional.

GW filed suit against D.C. in U.S. District Court April 25, about a month after The Board of Zoning Adjustment passed its campus plan. An enrollment freeze and ban on new academic buildings until 70 percent of undergraduate students are housed on campus would limit GW’s academic freedom, the University argues.

Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer granted a temporary injunction for the 2001-02 school year on the BZA’s conditions.

D.C. lawyers called GW’s charges “utterly meritless” in their motion, saying the city’s responses to overcrowding problems GW created do not violate any fundamental principles of the Constitution.

GW “proceeded from a prearranged admission plan rather than substantially altering the plan after GW had notice that it should limit its enrollment,” District lawyers said in their motion. D.C. also asked the judge to consider implications of a court questioning the city’s zoning laws and regulations.

University Senior Counsel Charles Barber said D.C. is “asking the court to decide the case before the trial based on the pleadings with no factual evidence.”

Barber said GW will “vigorously oppose the motion.”

“By granting the injunction, the judge found that GW had a substantial likelihood of success (in proving their claims),” he said. “D.C. thinks otherwise.”

GW’s must submit its response by July 13.