## Facts

- Jackson Park is a historic public park in Chicago held for public purposes.
- The Barack Obama Foundation proposed the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) on a 19.3-acre portion of Jackson Park, to be built and operated under arrangements with the City of Chicago and the Chicago Park District.
- The City acquired the 19.3-acre parcel from the Park District and enacted ordinances approving the site plan and authorizing agreements for the OPC after public hearings.
- The project contemplated physical changes to the park area, including removal of mature trees, roadway modifications, and certain city expenditures.
- A nonprofit group and residents sued the City and Park District, alleging:
  - state-law violations of Illinois’s public trust doctrine and related limits on governmental authority; and
  - federal constitutional violations, asserting that the public’s interest in the park constituted a property interest “taken” for private use and deprived without due process.

## Issues

1. Whether plaintiffs had a cognizable property interest in public parkland sufficient to support federal claims under the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause and Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process.
2. Whether plaintiffs had Article III standing in federal court to pursue state-law public trust and related ultra vires claims based on alleged injury to the park and asserted taxpayer/citizen interests.

## Decision

- The court affirmed summary judgment for defendants on the federal takings and due process claims because plaintiffs lacked a constitutionally protected property interest in public land.
- The court held plaintiffs lacked Article III standing to litigate the state-law public trust and related claims in federal court.
- The court vacated the merits judgment on the state-law claims and remanded with instructions to dismiss those claims for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.
- Disposition: affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.

## Legal Principles

- The public trust doctrine functions as a limit on governmental disposition or control of certain public lands; it does not create an individualized, privately held property right enforceable through federal takings or due process claims.
- A federal takings claim and a procedural due process claim each require a cognizable property interest; absent such an interest, the claims fail as a matter of law.
- Article III standing requires a concrete, particularized injury to the plaintiff; a generalized grievance that the government failed to comply with state law is insufficient.
- State-law rules allowing broad taxpayer or citizen suits do not relax federal Article III standing requirements.
- Municipal taxpayer standing in federal court requires a showing of unlawful expenditure of tax revenues, not merely disagreement with governmental action affecting public resources.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit rejected federal constitutional challenges to the OPC because the asserted public interest in parkland was not a private property interest, and it removed the state public-trust claims from federal court for lack of Article III standing, requiring dismissal without reaching the merits.


Protect Our Parks, Inc. v. Chicago Park District, 971 F.3d 722 (7th Cir. 2020)