Tag: Freedom Tower

A Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge on Monday declined an activist’s request to immediately block Miami Dade College from officially deeding over downtown land for Donald Trump’s presidential library.

But Judge Mavel Ruiz, presiding over a lawsuit alleging the college violated Florida’s Sunshine law last month when trustees voted to transfer the land to the state, left the door open to temporarily stop the move in the future.

The hearing — the first in the case brought last week by historian Marvin Dunn — was only about whether the college is allowed to proceed with the deed transfer while the case moves forward. Though trustees voted to convey the land to the state last month, as of Monday, the land is still in the college’s possession. Dunn wants Ruiz to issue a temporary injunction to ensure it stays that way.

Without ruling on the fundamental question in the case, Ruiz said Dunn had not yet established the right to sue by showing that he is a Florida citizen. Dunn’s attorneys said he was out of the country on a pre-planned trip and paperwork had not been fully processed due to closures related to the federal holiday.

The hourlong hearing nevertheless gave new insight into the College’s strategy to fight the allegations that they didn’t properly notify the public about the meeting where the trustees voted to hand over the land.

Miami-Dade College’s Board of Trustees voted without discussion to transfer land adjacent to the Freedom Tower it purchased in 2004 for $25 million to a state board during a Sept. 23 meeting that lasted less than five minutes. Florida’s Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund — led by the governor and state Cabinet — voted the following week to give the land to Trump’s library foundation.

The college’s attorneys stressed during Monday’s hearing that the college did issue a public notice about its special meeting to “discuss potential real estate transactions.” That notice did not mention a specific parcel of land or the purpose of the transfer, and the college ignored questions from the Miami Herald the day before the meeting about whether the vote was intended to facilitate the construction of Trump’s presidential library.

The true purpose of the vote wasn’t revealed until moments after, when Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that the land would be used for the library. The president’s son has since announced a plan to build a high-rise on the site.

But the college’s attorneys argued that Florida’s Sunshine law does not require additional details, only the fact of a meeting happening.

“They’re asking your honor to impose a requirement beyond the statutory requirement,” Jesus Suarez, who was representing Miami Dade College, told the judge. “Which is to say that the specificity of the notice was somehow insufficient. … I understand that they’d like that to be the state of the law, but it’s just not there.”

The judge appeared skeptical of their reading of Florida’s Sunshine law throughout the hearing.

“It’s a very narrow issue for the court: Was this reasonable notice? Yes or no,” Ruiz said. “The court would not be ‘making new law.’ It would be rightly or wrongly deciding whether or not the facts and the circumstance constitute reasonable notice.”

She also anticipated a long road ahead for the case. “Thank goodness that there’s a Third District Court of Appeals because this situation makes it a reasonable person of one, it’s what I think,” she said.

Once the college formally hands over the deed, Dunn’s attorneys said it would be more difficult to correct the alleged harm by forcing a new, publicly noticed meeting. In the long run, even if Dunn’s case is successful, the college’s trustees could still hand over the land — it would just force an opportunity for the public to weigh in.

A recent poll by Bendixen & Amandi International found that a large majority of Miami-Dade voters preferred that the college keep the property in its control, rather than give it away to be used for Trump’s presidential library.

“It’s plain that the alienation of such a valuable piece of public property, especially this iconic land, is a matter of great potential public injury,” Dunn’s attorney Andres Rivero argued.

At one point Judge Ruiz, who appeared sympathetic to their case, interrupted Rivero to say, “This is not a case about politics, this is a case about whether the Sunshine law was violated.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Rivero responded.