The years-long dispute between North End restaurateurs and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu will take center stage in federal court on Friday when the city argues an anti-Italian bias hasn’t driven heavy restrictions on outdoor dining in the neighborhood.

The owners of the 21 neighborhood restaurants and the North End Chamber of Commerce filed a complaint in January, alleging Wu has targeted their establishments unfairly and discriminatorily over the years.

City attorney Samantha Fuchs filed a motion to dismiss the restaurateurs’ complaint in federal court in April, saying the group’s argument is flawed on several fronts, in particular, failing to show how it deserves “any heightened scrutiny.”

In 2022, officials forced restaurateurs to pay a $7,500 fee for outdoor dining operations in a shortened season compared to other neighborhoods. In 2023, the city banned on-street dining, limiting the al fresco option to “compliant sidewalk patios,” a restriction which continued this past summer.

Restaurateurs amended the complaint in March, declaring “war” with Wu, adding losses they anticipated they’d encounter in 2024, fees they paid in 2022 and lost revenue from 2023. Out of Boston’s 23 neighborhoods, the North End has been the only one hit with restrictions against their will

The North End Restaurant Group – led by Jorge Mendoza-Iturralde, co-owner of Vinoteca di Monica, and Carla Gomes, owner of Terramia and Antico Forno – has stood firm in its stance on the city’s decision to heavily bar its participation in outdoor dining.

“We believe that we have been wrongfully singled out by The City as we have laid out in our complaint,” the group said in a statement to the Herald in April. “All we are requesting is to be treated the same as the other neighborhoods in the City of Boston.”

Fuch highlighted how the policy has applied to all North End restaurants, including non-Italian eateries, while Italian restaurants elsewhere haven’t been impacted.

“Assertions that the City ‘targeted businesses having Italian ethnicity and/or Italian national origin,’ are also inadequate, and demonstrably false,” Fuchs wrote. “The Restaurants cannot overcome a motion to dismiss ‘by asserting an inequity and tacking on the self-serving conclusion that the defendant was motivated by a discriminatory animus.’”

A hearing on the motion to dismiss had initially been scheduled for last week but was canceled due to a Thanksgiving holiday travel conflict. The argument is set to be heard Friday at 3 p.m. in the Seaport, court records show.