Ocean Springs homeowners on Wednesday appealed a federal court’s decision to dismiss their lawsuit against the city. The dispute stems from the city’s 2023 proposed urban renewal plan that would have permanently labeled some properties as “slum” or “blighted.”
While later that year the city voted against the plan after receiving public pushback, as the Sun Herald reported, the plaintiffs maintain that the state code behind the city’s plan violates their constitutional right to due process. They also argue that there’s nothing stopping the city of Ocean Springs, whose mayor, Kenny Holloway, supported the plan, from reintroducing the idea down the road.
In January, U.S. District Judge Taylor McNeel granted the city’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the appropriate way to contest the urban renewal plan was by appealing to their locally elected officials.
“This is somewhat evident by how the Plaintiffs’ complaints to their elected leaders have resulted in their properties being removed from the urban renewal area,” McNeel wrote in his opinion. “In a way, the Plaintiffs have already won.”
Under Mississippi law, cities are not required to notify owners of properties that they label “blighted,” a distinction that doesn’t go away. On top of that, those property owners only have 10 days to challenge the designation, a limitation that doesn’t exist in most states, an attorney for the plaintiffs told Mississippi Today in 2023. In 2023, property owners whose land was labeled “blighted” in the Ocean Springs urban renewal plan didn’t know about the designation until months later.
While Holloway, who also owns a real estate and development company, maintained that the city never wanted to forcibly take anyone’s property, a “blight” designation would have allowed the city to do just that through eminent domain.
The nonprofit Institute for Justice represents the five homeowners and church that filed the suit in Wednesday’s appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Mississippi governments cannot brand neighborhoods as slums in secret,” Dana Berliner, an attorney at the institute, said in a written statement. “Obviously telling a person about something when it’s too late to do anything is not the meaningful opportunity to be heard that the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process Clause requires.”
The nonprofit said it plans to make oral arguments in the New Orleans court later this year.
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