AUGUSTA — The “History of Maine Labor” mural will not be returning to the lobby of the Department of Labor right away.

U.S. District Court in Bangor on Friday denied a request by six people, including a group of Maine artists, to have the mural restored to its original home.

In issuing his decision, Judge John Woodcock said that Gov. Paul LePage was simply executing his right as governor when he ordered the mural removed last month.

LePage has said he did not care for the message sent by the mural depicting labor workers of Maine’s past, saying it presented a one-sided view of history.

Elected officials, Woodcock wrote, “have the right to decide what to say and what not to say, and by extension during their term in office, they are authorized to decide what the state of Maine says or does not say about it itself.”

“It is not the business of the federal court to decide what messages the elected leaders of the state of Maine should send about the policies of the state, to tell a prior administration that its own artwork is too slanted to continue to hang on state office walls, to tell the current administration that it must not remove or replace a prior administration’s artwork, or to tell a future administration which piece of state art, the new or the old, must stay or go,” Woodcock wrote.

Maine Attorney General William Schneider applauded Woodcock’s decision, saying the judge correctly found that elected officials “can and should express their views.” Schneider said the judge agreed with the state “that it would be a dangerous precedent for a federal court to dictate how the state government should express its views.”

Jeff Young, attorney for the plaintiffs, reacted to the news Friday afternoon.

“Disappointed,” he said, “but not shocked. We still believe that, at the end of the day, we will prevail.”

Young and Carol Garvan of McTeague Higbee, along with attorney Jonathan Beal of Portland, had filed the request for a temporary restraining order in federal court.

The complaint alleges that LePage’s removal of the mural denied plaintiffs their First Amendment right to view the artwork.

 The plaintiffs are Don Berry, training director of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 567, of Sumner; John Newton, an industrial hygienist, of Portland; and three Maine artists: Robert Shetterly of Brooksville, Natasha Mayers of Whitefield and Joan Braun of Weld. The sixth plaintiff is attorney Beal, who requested a public hearing prior to the removal of the mural.

Young vowed to continue fighting to get the mural returned.

“This case transcended the courtroom,” he wrote in a press release. “People from around the world responded to the governor’s decision to remove this mural from the Maine Department of Labor walls.”

“The fact is,” Young wrote, “the people of Maine do not want to be told by the government what they can and cannot see.”

The mural was installed in 2008 when Democrat John Baldacci was governor. Among the scenes it depicts are a 1986 paper mill strike; the fictional World War II icon Rosie the Riveter at work in a shipyard; and New Deal-era U.S. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, the first female Cabinet member, whose parents were from Maine.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.