I finally found the answer as to why the error message is arising and would like to post it in case others run into the same conundrum.

In WSL-2 (Dec 2024), wsl command on the Command Line starts WSL as the root user, and all files are owned by root. I had changed the user using su <myname> and received the error message. If do not change user to <myname> the problem goes away.

One can unmount /mnt/c, and remount it with <myname>. That will also resolve the problem.