My guess is standing. The family bringing the suit is not the family that donated the land.

So deed restrictions are unenforceable then?

If it is a park, does it mean anyone living in the city has standing because their entire city lost the park?

Hopefully just being a resident of a city doesn’t give you standing to sue over any decision that has a tenuous adverse effect on you. I mean if that holds why shouldn’t visitors who might one day hope to visit the given park have standing to sue?

> just being a resident of a city doesn’t give you standing to sue over any decision that has a tenuous adverse effect on you

Why not? If you are impacted, why not? When do you have a standing then?

Visitors out of town have less standing than the people paying taxes to the town, that is fair, but the city IS the people, each and every person, not an abstract third party that herds them like cattle.

The impact should need to be material and related to some legal right you have, it seems to me. In general you cannot sue to enforce a contract or agreement you are not a party to, even if the outcome of adhering to that contract affects you.

That is the point: as a citizen in a city, you are part of that city and any contract the city is part of. Otherwise, what/who is a city?

In the US, normally, citizens of a city do not have the right to act on behalf of the city. They cannot sue on behalf of the city, they cannot unilaterally attempt to enforce the city’s laws, etc. There are some rare exceptions where cities and states pass laws that create private rights of action when regulations are violated but these are the exception.

I've been trying to find this out. I suspect it was dismissed because they lacked standing. Because there were a bunch of transfer, likely only the last seller has standing to sue for ignoring a deed restriction and of course they don't care.

That's not absolute. There can be other cases where you have standing even if you aren't involved in the transaction but those cases are limited.

Now it's also possible that the deed wasn't properly recorded. If it was, there might be more people who have standing, such as those near the project who are negatively impacted. It's possible that the district court erred or maybe the people bringing suit didn't live in the area or otherwise have standing.

It does seem wrong that you can effectively invalidate a deed restriction by simply selling it enough times.

Yeah, there's no point to deed restrictions if the average person doesn't have standing to do anything about them.