Protect Our Parks, Inc. v. Chi. Park Dist.

• Decision Date: 21 August 2020
• Docket Number: Nos. 19-2308 & 19-3333,s. 19-2308 & 19-3333
• Citation: 971 F.3d 722
• Parties: PROTECT OUR PARKS, INC., and Maria Valencia, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT and City of Chicago, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

971 F.3d 722

PROTECT OUR PARKS, INC., and Maria Valencia, Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.CHICAGO PARK DISTRICT and City of Chicago, Defendants-Appellees.

Nos. 19-2308 & 19-3333

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued May 21, 2020

Decided August 21, 2020

Rehearing En Banc Denied October 8, 2020

Richard Epstein, Attorney, University of Chicago Law School, Chicago, IL, Michael Rachlis, Attorney, Rachlis, Duff, Adler & Peel LLC, Chicago, IL, for Plaintiffs - Appellants

Susan M. Horner, Attorney, Elizabeth M. Pall, Attorney, Joseph P. Roddy, Attorney, Burke, Warren, Mackay & Serritella, P.C., Chicago, IL, for Defendant - Appellee Chicago Park District

Myriam Z. Kasper, Attorney, Office of the Corporation Counsel, Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, Benna Ruth Solomon, Attorney, Elizabeth Tisher, Attorney, City of Chicago Law Department, Chicago, IL, for Defendant - Appellee City of Chicago

Linda T. Coberly, Attorney, Winston & Strawn LLP, Chicago, IL, for Amici Curiae George W. Bush Foundation, Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, George and Barbara Bush Foundation, Ronald Reagan Presidental Foundation, Carter Center

Craig C. Martin, Attorney, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, Chicago, IL, for Adler Planetarium, Field Museum of Natural History, Shedd Aquarium Society, Art Institute of Chicago, National Museum of Mexican Art

Sarah Losh Bakker, Attorney, Salvatore Prescott & Porter PLLC, Evanston, IL, for Amici Curiae Gregory Alexander, David Dana, Lee Anne Fennell, Nicole S. Garnett, James E. Krier

Before Manion, Barrett, and Brennan, Circuit Judges.

Barrett, Circuit Judge.

This case is about the plaintiffs’ quest to halt construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park. First developed as the site for the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Jackson Park has a storied place in Chicago history, and as public land, it must remain dedicated to a public purpose. The City made the judgment that hosting a center devoted to the achievements of America's first African-American President, who has a longstanding connection to Chicago, fit that bill. Vehemently disagreeing, the plaintiffs sued the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District to stop the project. They brought a host of federal and state claims, all asserting variants of the theory that the Obama Presidential Center does not serve the public interest but rather the private interest of its sponsor, the Barack Obama Foundation.

The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants across the board, and the plaintiffs appeal. We affirm the district court's judgment as to the federal claims, but we hold that it should have dismissed the state claims for lack of jurisdiction. Federal courts are only permitted to adjudicate claims that have allegedly caused the plaintiff a concrete injury; a plaintiff cannot come to federal court simply to air a generalized policy grievance. The federal claims allege a concrete injury, albeit one that, as it turns out, the law does not recognize. The state claims, however, allege only policy disagreements with Chicago and the Park District, so neither we nor the district court has jurisdiction to decide them.

I.

In 2014, the Barack Obama Foundation began a nationwide search for the future location of the presidential library for the 44th President. Eventually, the Foundation selected Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side to house the Obama Presidential Center. The City of Chicago acquired the 19.3 acres necessary from the Chicago Park District, enacted the ordinances required to approve the construction of the Center, and entered into a use agreement with the Obama Foundation to govern the terms of the Center's construction, ownership, and operation. The Jackson Park location, the Foundation believed, would be best situated to "attract visitors on a national and global level" and would "bring significant long term benefits to the South Side."

But construction of the Center will require the removal of multiple mature trees, as well as the closure and diversion of roadways. It will also require the City to shoulder a number of big-ticket expenses. Unhappy with the environmental and financial impact of the project, the group Protect Our Parks and several individual Chicago residents sued both the City and the Park District to halt construction of the Center.

The plaintiffs raised four claims that are relevant here. First and foremost, they claimed that the defendants violated Illinois's public trust doctrine. Briefly stated, the public trust doctrine limits the government's ability to transfer control or ownership of public lands to private parties. The plaintiffs argued that the City violated the doctrine by transferring control of public parkland to the Obama Foundation for a purely private purpose.

Next, the plaintiffs claimed that under Illinois law, the defendants acted ultra vires—in layman's terms, beyond their legal authority—in entering the use agreement with the Foundation. Specifically, the plaintiffs maintained that the use agreement between the City and the Foundation violates Illinois law because, among other things, it delegates decision-making authority to the Foundation, grants the Foundation an illegal lease in all but name, 70 ILCS 1290/1, exchanges the property for less than equal value, 70 ILCS 1205/10-7(b), and fails to require the City to "use, occupy, or improve" the land transferred to it from the Park District, 50 ILCS 605/2.

The plaintiffs’ final two claims arise under federal law. They argued that, by altering the use of Jackson Park and handing over control to the Foundation, the defendants took the plaintiffs’ property for a private purpose in violation of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In the same vein, the plaintiffs asserted that the defendants deprived them of property in a process so lacking in procedural safeguards that it amounted to a rubberstamp of the Foundation's decision and violated their rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The district court granted summary judgment to the City and the Park District on all four of these claims, and the plaintiffs appealed from that decision. While the first appeal was pending, the federal government issued a provisional report about the potential effects of the project, including its effects on the environment. The plaintiffs then moved for relief from the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), alleging that the report was new, material evidence that undermined the district court's decision. The district court denied the motion, and the plaintiffs appealed again. We consolidated the two appeals.

II.

We'll start with the plaintiffs’ appeal from the district court's grant of summary judgment on the state law claims. Before we can address the merits, though, we have "an obligation to assure ourselves" of our jurisdiction. DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno , 547 U.S. 332, 340, 126 S.Ct. 1854, 164 L.Ed.2d 589 (2006) (citation omitted). And jurisdiction—specifically, the plaintiffs’ standing to bring their state claims in federal court—proves to be a problem here. We asked the parties to address this issue in supplemental briefing, and while both the plaintiffs and the defendants assure us that the plaintiffs have standing, we aren't convinced.

The requirement of standing "is an essential and unchanging part of the case-or-controversy requirement of Article III." Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife , 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). Its elements are familiar: "the plaintiff must allege an injury in fact that is traceable to the defendant's conduct and redressable by a favorable judicial decision." Casillas v. Madison Ave. Assocs., Inc. , 926 F.3d 329, 333 (7th Cir. 2019). The first requirement—injury in fact—is "the ‘[f]irst and foremost’ of standing's three elements." Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins , ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1547, 194 L.Ed.2d 635 (2016) (alteration in original) (citation omitted). It requires a plaintiff to demonstrate that she "suffered ‘an invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is ‘concrete and particularized’ and ‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’ " Id. at 1548 (quoting Lujan , 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130 ). The parties insist that the plaintiffs have adequately alleged that they will suffer an imminent, concrete injury as a result of the defendants’ alleged violations of Illinois law.

To understand the arguments that the parties make to support this point, one must first understand the public trust doctrine, which is the basis of the plaintiffs’ primary state law claim. Here's the nutshell version: the public trust doctrine, established in American law by Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. Illinois , prohibits a state from alienating its interest in public lands submerged beneath navigable waterways to a private party for private purposes. 146 U.S. 387, 455–56, 13 S.Ct. 110, 36 L.Ed. 1018 (1892). Instead, a state may only alienate publicly owned submerged land to a private party if the property will be "used in promoting the interests of the public" or "can be disposed of without any substantial impairment of the public interest in the lands and waters remaining." Id. at 453, 13 S.Ct. 110.

In the time since Illinois Central , some states, including Illinois, have applied the doctrine to land other than navigable waterways—which is important here because Jackson Park is not a navigable waterway. In fact, despite the doctrine's underwater origins, most of the recent Illinois cases deal with dry land. See Friends of the Parks v. Chi. Park Dist. , 203 Ill.2d 312, 271 Ill.Dec. 903, 786 N.E.2d 161, 169–70 (2003) (applying the doctrine to Chicago's Soldier Field, built on parkland reclaimed from Lake Michigan); Paepcke v. Pub. Bldg. Comm'n of Chi. , 46 Ill.2d 330, 263 N.E.2d 11, 15–16 (1970) (applying the doctrine to Chicago's Washington and Douglas parks); Fairbank v. Stratton , 14 Ill.2d 307, 152 N.E.2d 569, 575 (1958) (applying...