Cleveland Browns Await Last-Ditch Suits to Stop New Stadium

Attorneys behind a pair of still-pending lawsuits hope they can complicate the Cleveland Browns’ move away from the city and into a new suburban stadium.

The last-ditch lawsuits are what remains of a flurry of litigation that started last year as the Browns announced plans to build the new stadium. Local officials have resigned themselves to the idea that the team is leaving Cleveland proper, nearly three decades after it returned, and the city has dropped its challenges and agreed to cooperate with the move.

The lawsuits in state and federal court attack where Ohio officials chose to find $600 million in its coffers to put toward the $2.4 billion domed stadium in the city of Brook Park, which borders Cleveland, and whether Cleveland properly represented its own interests in enforcing the Browns’ lease for Huntington Bank Field.

“The question is how long these suits linger,” said Eric C. Chaffee, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. “Courts don’t particularly like to hear suits they think are moot.”

A spokesman for the Browns didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Modell Law’

For some time, the focus was on Ohio’s “Modell Law,” which said a professional sports team that uses a tax-supported stadium can’t stop playing most of its home games there without the city’s consent.

The law was named after former Browns owner Art Modell, who moved the team to Baltimore after the 1995 season. The NFL subsequently awarded Cleveland a new franchise under different ownership, with a new stadium.

First, the Browns sued Cleveland to try to get a federal judge to declare the law unconstitutional; the city then sued the team in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to try to enforce the law. In a third lawsuit, the city sued an Ohio agency that approved the planned height of the new stadium, which is to be near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

But in October, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb (D) reached a deal estimated to be worth $100 million with Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam to end the lawsuits and cooperate with the team’s move to the new stadium, which it plans to use by the start of the 2029 season. The city council approved the deal this month.

The legislature also amended the Modell Law to apply only to teams moving out of state, a change that took effect in September.

Two Lawsuits

The deal didn’t resolve two other suits over the stadium plans.

One remaining suit challenges a state law mandating the creation of the Ohio Cultural and Sports Facility Performance Grant Fund, which will consist of unclaimed money and property that’s more than 10 years old. Of that money, $600 million will go to the Browns.

The proposed class action, filed in July in state court and moved to federal court in October, says the plan violates the constitutional rights of those with unclaimed property. A federal judge ruled this month that the challengers aren’t entitled to a preliminary injunction to immediately stop the state from giving the Browns the money, but declined to outright dismiss the case. That decision is now on appeal.

Marc E. Dann, a former Democratic state attorney general who’s pursuing that suit, said “$600 million is a rounding error” to the Haslams and that they could cover that amount themselves or borrow it. But he also said this case is about due process and unlawful takings.

There’s also a lawsuit from former Cleveland Mayor and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who introduced the bill that became the Modell Law when he was a state senator and wants to litigate on the city’s behalf.

Kucinich seeks a judge’s order that says the Modell Law change is unconstitutional or doesn’t apply to the Browns. He also wants to block the Browns from moving and to force the city to still go after the team with the old version of the Modell Law.

The city asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, saying its own legal efforts rendered Kucinich’s case moot; she hasn’t yet ruled.

Logan Trombley, an attorney representing Kucinich, said his client is “more just trying to disrupt the process in order to give more time” to the City Council to deliberate, even though it already approved the deal.

Trombley, of Mendenhall Law Group, also said the city was “angling for a settlement” since the beginning and that he didn’t think it was too late for Kucinich to press his claims.

Chaffee conceded it may be too late to stop the move.

“At this point, most of them are probably sideshows,” Chaffee said of the lawsuits. Even if they were successful, “I think the Browns move is pretty much a done deal.”

The cases are Kucinich v. Cleveland, Ohio Ct. Com. Pl., No. CV-25-123704, filed 8/29/25, Bleick v. Maxfield, S.D. Ohio, No. 2:25-cv-01140, filed 10/2/25, and Bleick v. Maxfield, 6th Cir., No. 25-3978, filed 12/12/25.