The lawsuit argues that the president, his presidential library foundation and state officials — including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — violated the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits states from giving a financial benefit to a sitting president.
The White House didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment on Wednesday night.
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DeSantis moved last September to transfer a 2.63-acre (1.06-hectare) parcel of land to Trump’s presidential library foundation. Since then, the president and his son Eric Trump shared extravagant plans for a skyscraper to house the library. An artificial intelligence video unveiled in March includes panning shots of the tower’s exterior and interior, with a presidential jet parked in the lobby alongside a gold escalator like the one Trump rode while launching his presidential campaign in 2015. Other shots show a giant ballroom like the one he’s planning for the White House, a replica Oval Office, rooftop gardens and a large, gold statue of Trump.
The president also suggested that there could be for-profit entities in the building.
“This concept could be an office, but it’s most likely going to be a hotel with a beautiful building underneath,” Trump said to reporters in March.
The complaint argued that this means the land “is no longer available to serve MDC’s student community and Downtown Miami. Instead, the land will house a Trump hotel that brings riches to the President.”
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The property that was donated to Trump’s foundation is owned by Miami Dade College and sits next to the Freedom Tower, a historic building that rises alongside the glitzy condos facing palm tree-lined Biscayne Bay. The Spanish Revival skyscraper once housed one of the city’s first newspapers, but later served as a resource centre for hundreds of thousands of Cubans seeking asylum in the United States, according to Miami Dade College, which now operates the site as a museum.
The site is valued at roughly $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. Other real estate experts, including appraisers cited in the lawsuit, have wagered that the parcel could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.
Lawyers with the Constitutional Accountability Centre in Washington, DC, and Miami-based law firm Gelber Schachter & Greenberg filed the lawsuit on behalf of a student at Miami Dade College, two people who live near the donated parcel of land and a local nonprofit organisation that had hoped to use the parcel as the site of an urban farm.
