Washington — A federal judge has ordered Vice President Dick Cheney to preserve all records that relate to his office and official duties pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by a watchdog group and several scholarly associations.

The judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court here, issued the injunction on Saturday. In her decision, she noted the possibility of “irreparable injury” to the historical record if the vice president’s office destroyed or failed to preserve records while the case proceeded.

The suit was brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, joined by the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Society of American Archivists, and two historians, Stanley Kutler and Martin Sherwin. In a blog post that noted the judge’s order, the AHA commented that “it appeared the defendants in the case — the Office of the Vice President and the National Archives — were trying to narrowly define the records that should be covered by the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and to avoid specifying how the records would be transferred to the Archives.” —Jennifer Howard