CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Browns late Thursday filed a lawsuit against the city of Cleveland challenging the “Modell Law,” a state law designed to stop teams from leaving cities that subsidized them with taxpayer money.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Cleveland, seeks to have law ruled unconstitutional. The case has not yet been assigned to a judge.
Dave Jenkins, chief operating officer for the Haslam Sports Group, said in a statement that the team is “seeking clarity on this vague and unclear law.”
“Today’s action for declaratory judgment was filed to take this matter out of the political domain and ensure we can move this transformative project forward to make a new domed Huntington Bank Field in Brook Park a reality,” Jenkins said.
The lawsuit comes a week after Mayor Justin Bibb announced that the Browns intended to leave their downtown home and build a new stadium in Brook Park.
Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer reached out to the city for comment.
The Browns are looking at building a $2.4 billion domed stadium in Brook Park that would be part of a much larger entertainment district on a 176-acre plot. Team owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have said they want a 50-50 split between private and public financing. The Browns have not said where the public financing will come from.
Cleveland City Council has already passed a resolution directing the city administration to enforce the Modell Law.
Ex-Cleveland Mayor and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who authored the law as a state representative, has also threatened Cleveland with a taxpayer lawsuit if the city does not invoke the law.
The law was named after Art Modell — the locally despised former Browns owner, who uprooted the team and moved it to Baltimore in 1996. The law requires sports teams to give their respective cities six-months’ notice before leaving town and to give the city or area residents a chance to buy the team first.
The Modell Law was invoked in 2018 when the Columbus Crew soccer team was mulling a move to Texas, but questions about the law’s constitutionality remained unanswered when the case resolved. Amid the legal challenge at the time, the Haslams teamed up with another investor to buy the Crew, reportedly for $150 million.
Kucinich said during a phone interview that what the Browns are doing is “fundamentally wrong.” He said the lawsuit will cost the cash-strapped city millions of dollars. He said the Haslams also benefited from the Modell Law in 2018, when they and another investor brought the Crew.
Kucinich said taxpayers have an interest in keeping the team in Cleveland, having spent hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds on the team. He said he expects the Modell Law to overcome the challenge.
“If their legal strategy is as good as their management of the Browns, the taxpayers don’t have anything to worry about,” Kucinich said.
The Browns lease at Huntington Bank Field ends after the 2028 season. In Thursday’s lawsuit the Browns say they had worked with city since 2017, looking both at renovating their current stadium and at other sites in Cleveland — including Burke Lakefront Airport. The team said in the lawsuit that the Brook Park option was seen as the best option.
In the lawsuit, the team disputes that the Modell Law is constitutional or enforceable. The team said it was left with no choice but to file a lawsuit, since city officials had announced plans to sue the team.
One highlight of the lawsuit is that the team says the Modell Law is too vague.
It doesn’t define how far a team must move to invoke the law, when the team must give the city notice or how the owners must go about putting the team for sale, the lawsuit said.
“The statute is so vague and ambiguous that neither the Browns nor any other owner of a professional sports franchise in Ohio has fair notice about what conduct the statute contemplates or forbids,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit also argues that the state of Ohio does not have the power to regulate interstate commerce and that the NFL’s rules prohibit the Haslams from selling the team without permission, according to the lawsuit.
Following the Modell Law would breach their agreements with the NFL, according to the team.
Sean McDonnell is a reporter for cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer. You can reach him at [email protected].