A Florida judge has temporarily blocked the planned transfer of a significant parcel of downtown Miami land for Donald Trump’s future presidential library.
The Tuesday move by Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz came after a Miami activist alleged that officials at Miami Dade College violated Florida’s open government law when they gifted the sizable plot of real estate to the state, which then voted to transfer it to the foundation for President Trump’s planned library.
CBS News reports:
“This is not an easy decision,” Ruiz said Tuesday when explaining her ruling from the bench.
“This is not a case, at least for this court, rooted in politics,” she added.
Marvin Dunn, an activist and chronicler of local Black history, filed a lawsuit this month in a Miami-Dade County court against the Board of Trustees for Miami Dade College, a state-run school that owned the property.
He alleges that the board violated Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law by not providing sufficient notice for its special meeting on Sept. 23, when it voted to give up the land.
Richard Brodsky, an attorney for Dunn, said the issue before the court was not a question of politics, but whether the public board followed the open government law.
“The people have a right to know what they’re going to decide to do when the transaction is so significant, so unusual and deprives the students and the college of this land,” Brodsky said.
The nearly 3-acre property is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser.
One real estate expert estimated that the parcel—one of the last undeveloped lots on an iconic stretch of palm tree-lined Biscayne Boulevard—could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.
There always seems to be a “Democrat Judge” every time.