A Florida judge has temporarily blocked the transfer of a site earmarked for President Donald Trump’s future presidential library after a lawsuit was filed by a local historian and activist who once sought a congressional seat as a Democrat.
Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz issued a temporary injunction on Tuesday blocking the transfer of the prime downtown Miami site to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation, finding that reasonable public notice was not given before Miami Dade College’s board voted to transfer the property.
Ruiz said her decision was based on procedure and not politics.
“This is not an easy decision,” Mavel said when explaining her ruling from the bench, finding that the college didn’t give the public reasonable notice ahead of the vote last month.
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“This is not a case, at least for this court, rooted in politics,” she added, per The Associated Press. Ruiz was last re-elected in 2020 and is not nominated the same way federal judges are.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet voted last month to gift the Trump Presidential Library the 2.63-acre parcel on Biscayne Boulevard.
The Miami site is currently used as an employee parking lot for Miami Dade College’s Wolfson Campus and is adjacent to the historic Freedom Tower, which served as a resource center for hundreds of thousands of Cubans who fled communism in the 1960s and 1970s and sought asylum in the United States.
Marvin Dunn, a retired Florida International University professor known for chronicling Black history in South Florida, is trying to stop the transfer and filed the lawsuit arguing it would violate Florida law and the public trust by using public educational property for a private, political purpose.
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“Miami Dade College is a public educational institution, not a political enterprise, and must not become the custodian of any former president’s personal monument,” the lawsuit reads. “The proposed conveyance would divert land held in trust for educational purposes to serve private and partisan interests.”
Dunn, a former naval officer, filed to run for a Florida House seat in 2018 but withdrew before the Democratic primary. He initially said he was inspired to run because Trump was slow to address the deaths of four American soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger that year and that the U.S. had become an uncivilized society under Trump, per the Miami Herald.
He led a protest against the transfer of the site last month in Miami and public records list Dunn a registered Democrat in Miami-Dade County.
The lawsuit further claims the process was conducted without sufficient public notice or input, possibly violating Florida’s Sunshine Law, which requires open meetings for public boards.
Jesus Suarez, an attorney for the college, argued that Miami Dade College did what was required under the law and questioned Dunn’s political motivations for filing the case.
“There is no requirement under Florida law that there be specificity on notice, because those trustees can come into that room and talk to each other about whatever they wish,” Suarez told The Associated Press.
The agenda for the board’s Sept. 23 meeting listed only a brief note that trustees would discuss transferring property to a state trust fund managed by DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet. It offered no explanation about which parcel was under review or the reason for the move. Unlike all other board meetings this year, the early-morning session at 8 a.m. was not streamed online.
Roughly a week later, DeSantis and other Republican officials in the Cabinet voted to move the property again — a step that ultimately placed control of the downtown Miami site in the hands of the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, the nonprofit tied to Trump’s family.
Trump’s son Eric, who is the president and one of three trustees at the foundation, previously said that the library will be “one of the most beautiful buildings ever built” and will preserve his father’s legacy. He also said it would not look like former President Barack Obama’s presidential center, which is slowly rising in Chicago.
The Miami site is surrounded by luxury high-rise apartment buildings and has waterfront views, facing directly at the Kaseya Center, home to the NBA’s Miami Heat, as well as Dodge Island, where many of the world’s largest cruise liners dock.
The parcel was appraised at more than $66 million, according to media reports, but it could sell for at least $360 million, The New York Times reported, citing a real estate consultant.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
