University of Maryland Students for Justice in Palestine, a student group on the College Park campus, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday challenging the decision from the university and the University System of Maryland decision to cancel a vigil scheduled for Oct. 7.

The event, originally approved by the university, was meant to be an interfaith vigil “to mourn lives lost in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

The students are seeking an injunction barring the university from canceling the event , and for the ability to host their vigil as planned on Oct. 7.

Oct. 7 is the one-year anniversary of the Hamas-lead attack on Israel that marked the start of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The initial attack killed around 1,200 people and saw Hamas capture around 250 hostages, according to the Associated Press. Since then, more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed.

University of Maryland administrators initially approved the student group’s reservation to hold an event on McKeldin Mall on the anniversary, according to the lawsuit. The event was going to be co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace at the University of Maryland.

The Students for Justice in Palestine group says the decision to cancel the event violates its rights under the First Amendment and says the decision to cancel “expressive activity” on Oct. 7 “amounts to illegal content, viewpoint and speaker-based discrimination against UMD-SJP.”

After its reservation was approved on July 31, university administrators requested a meeting to discuss the event, according to the suit. During an Aug. 19 meeting, the lawsuit said students met with UMD’s president, Darryll Pines, and the university’s vice president for student affairs, Patricia Perillo.

The administrators told students they had “been receiving pressure from groups inside and outside of” the university to cancel the event but “they were committed to protecting the free speech of students,” according to the lawsuit.

They said the “reservation rightly belonged to” the student group, and that they had “followed all event planning and facility reservation policies,” according to the lawsuit.

On Sept. 1, after online petitions and other meetings, administrators told SJP they were going to revoke the Oct. 7 reservation over a nonspecific concern for “student safety,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also claimed that one of the administrators “pressured” the students to reschedule for Oct. 8.

In a public letter announcing the cancellation, sent shortly after that Sept. 1 meeting, Pines said a review found no immediate or active safety threat for Oct. 7.

The letter says that UMD, jointly with the University System of Maryland, decided that only “university-sponsored events that promote reflection” would be permitted on Oct. 7.

Tori Porell, an attorney with Palestine Legal who is representing the students, said an ideal outcome in the lawsuit is “pretty simple.”

The students “had an event that had been approved already,” she said. “They would like to be able to move forward with that event as they planned.”

Speaking during a livestreamed press conference announcing the lawsuit, students said they had been able to organize and reserve Students for Justice in Palestine events at the University of Maryland as recently as late August.

A spokesperson for the University System of Maryland said the university system does not comment on pending litigation. A spokesperson for UMD referred back to the school’s public letter about the decision to cancel the event.

The lawsuit also seeks the cost of attorney’s fees and damages for the violation of the students’ First Amendment rights.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Darryll Pines’ first name.