A federal judge in Pennsylvania has denied President Donald Trump‘s request to dismiss a defamation suit brought against him by the men known as the Central Park Five.

In a judgement issued Thursday morning, Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ordered that the case proceed based on comments Trump made during a debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump in the debate raised the Central Park Five as an example of a past grievance that Harris might weaponize during the campaign, saying: “They come up with things like what she just said going back many, many years when a lot of people including Mayor Bloomberg agreed with me on the Central Park Five.”

He then proceeded to say the five men “admitted – they said, they pled guilty, and I said, well, if they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately. And if they pled guilty—then they pled we’re not guilty.”

Beetlestone determined that Trump’s statements “can be ‘objectively determined’ to be false, so Defendant’s [Trump’s] statement must be construed as one of fact, not opinion.”

This is a developing story and more information will be added as it becomes available.