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A man walks in front of a graffiti painted on the wall of a building located inside the 15th-century complex built by Mameluk Sultan al-Ashraf Qaitbey, in Cairo's City of the Dead, Egypt Feb. 13, 2017. Reuters

A Missouri congressman said Monday he planned to file a federal lawsuit over the removal of a painting from display in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, arguing that it violated constitutional rights of expression, according to the Associated Press.

The painting, called “Untitled #1,” included a pig in a police uniform aiming a gun at what appeared to be a black wolf holding a sign that read “stop kill.” The controversial painting came after weeks of protests due to the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man who was killed in Ferguson, Missouri, by white officer Darren Wilson in 2014.

"The painting portrays a colorful landscape of symbolic characters representing social injustice, the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri, and the lingering elements of inequality in modern American society," Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay's office said in a statement last year. The portrait, which was a winning submission by former Cardinal Ritter High School senior David Pulphus in Clay's annual Congressional Arts Competition in May, hung in a tunnel leading to the Capitol for more than seven months, the AP reported.

However, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., took the painting down early last month because he found it to be inappropriate and returned it to Clay's office. It was rehung by the congressman a few days after. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., then took the piece down the second time around, saying "it doesn't belong here," according to congressional reporter Rema Rahman.

Clay, who is a member of the Black Congressional Caucus, said the lawmakers' actions violated a constituent's First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

Clay's forthcoming lawsuit was set to be a "response to the arbitrary and unconstitutional disqualification and removal" of the artwork, his office told the AP.

"Congressman Clay is seeking an appropriate remedy through this federal litigation and he is proud to defend both the fundamental rights of his constituent and the First Amendment," his office added.

The term "pig" is a derogatory slang term used to describe law enforcement. It first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1811.

Tensions between minorities and police have boiled over in recent years after several unarmed black men died at the hands of officers, prompting the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement in July 2013. In 2016, 963 people were shot and killed by police, the Washington Post reported. So far in 2017, 151 people have been slain by officers.

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