[blacktrojan3921]

https://news.wttw.com/2020/05/27/are...center-lawsuit

In the latest twist to the Obama Presidential Center saga, appeals court judges are questioning whether a lawsuit against the center’s construction in Jackson Park has any standing in federal court — a query they made after they’d already heard oral arguments in the appeal last week.

Following the hearing, the plaintiff, Protect Our Parks, and defendant, the Chicago Park District, received an order to file supplemental briefs addressing whether they have standing to bring their public trust doctrine claim in federal court. The parties were given until June 4 to comply.

The formal order was a surprise request, said Herbert Caplan, founder of the advocacy group Protect Our Parks, particularly considering that not even the defendant had previously challenged the matter of standing.

Judge Amy Barrett, a 2017 appointee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, broached the question of jurisdiction during oral arguments, which Caplan said he thought attorney Richard Epstein, arguing the case on behalf of Protect Our Parks, adequately affirmed. Benna Solomon, deputy corporation counsel for the appeals division of the City of Chicago Law Department, concurred that the case had federal standing.

“It was sort of a clue that at least one and maybe the entire panel (Judges Barrett, Daniel Manion and Michael Brennan) is looking for a way to just kind of duck making a decision on the case,” Caplan said. “I think they’re going through the same kind of anxiety that a lot of people have because former President (Barack) Obama is the central figure, even though he’s not a party to the lawsuit, and I think the judges don’t want to get into the middle of anything that smacks of a political dispute, or could turn into a political dispute. I think their desire and their intention is to get rid of this case fast. That’s why I think they’re looking for ways to get rid of it even faster.”

Kind of surprising Barrett would make this kind of ruling, especially since she's a Trump appointee.

In any case, the center should just be built already. I still stand by the notion that groups like 'Protect the Parks' are nothing more than mostly high class, faux progressive NIMBYISTS who don't even live in the South Side and only care about making the parks postcard friendly, regardless of the fact that they are often underused.