The Securities Investor Protection Corp. opposed an effort by the owners of the New York Mets to move a $1 billion suit filed by the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s defunct firm to federal district court from bankruptcy court.

In a filing yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, the SIPC backed the trustee, Irving Picard, who has asked the district court to leave the case in the bankruptcy court. The SIPC argued that the bankruptcy court is better equipped to consider the case and that the Mets owners and a group of related parties willingly submitted themselves to bankruptcy-court jurisdiction by filing claims in that forum.

“The motion is an unwarranted attempt to remove to this court matters within the bankruptcy court’s ‘core’ jurisdiction and competence,” the SIPC argued.

The Mets owners claim they were innocent victims of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.