The city authority of Glendale, southern California, has asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Japanese-American citizens in February over a statue erected in a public park to honor wartime sex slaves.

In the notice of motion Friday, the city defended its decision to allow Korean-Americans to put up the memorial to the so-called comfort women of the Imperial Japanese Army, saying such approval is in line with “the city’s exercise of its rights of free speech.”

In the lawsuit, two Japanese-Americans and a nonprofit educational group asked the U.S. federal court in the District of Central California to order Glendale to remove the statue. They claimed the city does not have the authority to involve itself in an international dispute and has infringed the constitutional power of the federal government to set foreign policy.