In the latest legal maneuver aimed at subverting the Thirty Meter Telescope, foes of the $1.4 billion project are accusing the state of failing to require a construction security bond.

TMT attorney Douglas Ing said he wasn’t impressed following a brief review of an unfiled copy of the lawsuit Tuesday.

“We believe this is a weak lawsuit and we expect to defeat it,” he said in a statement.

Mauna Kea Hui leader Kea­loha Pisciotta said the suit filed Monday in 3rd Circuit Court on Hawaii island is the first of at least three planned legal challenges aimed at preventing the TMT from being built on Hawaii’s tallest mountain.

The state last month issued a formal notice to proceed with constructing the next-generation telescope following more than a decade of planning, delays and controversy.

The suit, filed by Big Island attorney Gary Zamber for Pisciotta and others who have battled the TMT in court, claims that the Mauna Kea Plan of 1977 requires every development to have a security bond in the amount of the full cost of the project.

The claim seeks an injunction and asks the court to suspend the project’s notice to proceed.

“The rules clearly state that a bond is required,” Pisciotta said Tuesday.

“By failing to post the bond, they have laid all financial liability on the People of Hawai‘i, in the event (that) TMT doesn’t get full funding and this is especially important because they don’t have full funding now,” Pisciotta said in an email.

Pisciotta said a bond helps to ensure that the land can be returned to its original state — a requirement of TMT’s conservation district use permit — if the project goes bankrupt in the middle of construction.

“That is the purpose of requiring a bond in the first place — so the people don’t get stuck with the bill,” she said.

Cindy McMillan, Gov. David Ige’s spokeswoman, declined to comment, saying she hadn’t seen the lawsuit.

The issue, however, was addressed during the latest TMT contested case hearing in 2017.

Judge Riki May Amano responded in the contested case’s findings of fact, saying the 1977 Mauna Kea Plan was intended as a “conceptual” policy guide in need of review and updating over time.

“Circumstances change,” the findings said. “It was the first ‘master plan’ for Mauna Kea and consists of 17 pages. It has obviously been superseded by the much more detailed and extensive planning efforts that are described elsewhere in these findings of fact.”

A bond requirement couldn’t be found in a cursory search of the latest iteration of the Mauna Kea Science Reserve Master Plan adopted in 2000.

The claim names as defendants Ige, state Attorney General Clare Connors, state Land Board Chairwoman Suzanne Case and other members of the state Board of Land and Natural Resources, plus Hawaii County Mayor Harry Kim, University of Hawaii President David Lassner and the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory.

The plaintiffs include Pisciotta and other Native Hawaiian religious and cultural practitioners who were petitioners in the recent TMT contested case and court case.

Pisciotta, a former Mauna Kea astronomy technician and now veteran defender in court of a mountain she considers sacred, declined to discuss the topics for future litigation.

TMT officials say they are hoping to launch construction of the landmark telescope sometime this summer.