2023 Attorneys of the Year: E. Phillips Neighborhood Inst. v. City of Minneapolis
From left: Elizabeth Royal, Hudson Kingston, Jessica Blome, Jordan Hughes and Miles Ringsred
Via Minnesota Lawyer by Frank Jossi // February 9, 2024
A battle over the fate of a Minneapolis city works facility in the East Phillips neighborhood has ended after more than a decade of protest and debate.
The East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) and other community activists in the low-income BIPOC neighborhood have been behind an effort to fight the city of Minneapolis from demolishing the arsenic-laden Roof Depot warehouse and to redevelop the site into a public works yard. A judge halted the city’s demolition plan in February 2023, giving EPNI time to successfully lobby the Legislature to allocate $7.7 million for it to buy the property.
St. Paul-based attorney Elizabeth Royal has served as EPNI’s counsel for several years. The former Red Lake tribal judge said she knew little about environmental law when she began working with EPNI during the COVID-19 pandemic. “In the beginning, it was a couple of law clerks and myself during COVID working out in my backyard with masks on under two umbrellas,” Royal said. “I had a small printer on my garden table.”