A federal judge in the Central District of California threw out a lawsuit filed by the owners of Marilyn Monroe's former Los Angeles home, ending, for now, their fight to tear down the Brentwood bungalow where the actress died in 1962.
Roy Bank and Brinah Milstein, who purchased the property for more than $8 million in 2023, had sued the city of Los Angeles after it designated the home a "Historical-Cultural Monument" and blocked their plans to demolish it. The couple argued the city's action amounted to an "unconstitutional taking" of their property, carried out "without any public purpose or just compensation." A federal judge dismissed the case on Wednesday, leaving the monument designation intact and the house still standing.
The ruling is a setback for property rights advocates who saw the case as a clear example of government overreach, a city retroactively stripping homeowners of rights they had already secured through lawful permits.
The timeline matters here. Bank and Milstein bought the single-family home in 2023. They obtained demolition and grading permits from the city. They spent $30,000 on the permitting process alone. They had every legal reason to believe they could tear down the aging 1929 bungalow and build a new house on the lot at the end of a dead-end street in one of Los Angeles's most expensive neighborhoods.
Then, in 2024, the city reversed course. Los Angeles designated the property a Historic-Cultural Monument, halting all redevelopment. The owners were left holding an $8 million asset they could not use as planned, and a growing list of headaches that came with it.
Their complaint laid out the absurdity of the designation in blunt terms. The couple alleged that "not a trace of Ms. Monroe's short tenure at the house remains at the property or in the house, and the house has been substantially altered by successive owners over more than sixty years." Monroe owned the home for roughly six months. She bought it in February 1962, shortly after her divorce from playwright Arthur Miller, and was found dead there the following August at age 36. The coroner ruled her death the result of acute barbiturate poisoning, likely a suicide.
Six decades of renovations by other owners had, the couple argued, erased whatever historical character the house once possessed. Yet the city treated the address itself as sacred ground.
The monument designation did more than freeze the owners' construction plans. It turned their home into a tourist destination. The owners' lawsuit described how the city's action attracted "traffic congestion on the short, narrow dead-end street adjacent to the property along with numerous trespassers leaping over and onto property walls to get into the 'designated' house."
Bank and Milstein said they had to hire private security after burglars broke in. The couple didn't buy a museum. They bought a house. The city turned it into something else, and left them to bear the costs.
That dynamic sits at the heart of a broader pattern in cities like Los Angeles, where local governments impose restrictions on private property in the name of public interest but decline to compensate the owners who foot the bill. The case echoes other recent disputes in which federal judges have weighed government authority against private rights in fights over land use, construction, and demolition.
The couple's legal team at the Pacific Legal Foundation framed the fight squarely as a Fifth Amendment case. The Foundation's attorney, J. David Breemer, told Fox News that the homeowners had "a straightforward request: either let them use their own property or compensate them fairly for turning it into a public monument."
The argument is not exotic constitutional theory. It is the plain text of the Takings Clause: the government may not take private property for public use without just compensation. Bank and Milstein contended that the monument designation effectively seized their property's development value, and gave them nothing in return.
The federal judge disagreed, at least at this stage. The court's reasoning has not been detailed in available reporting, and neither the judge's name nor the case docket number has been published. But the dismissal does not appear to have shaken the Pacific Legal Foundation's resolve.
Breemer told People Magazine that "the court's decision is a bit surprising, but it's not over. We are preparing our next steps in this case."
Courts across the country have grappled with similar tensions between preservation mandates and property rights. Federal appeals courts have weighed in on high-profile construction disputes with increasing frequency, and the question of when a government restriction crosses the line into an uncompensated taking remains far from settled.
Consider what Los Angeles accomplished. It preserved a house that, by the owners' own account, bears no physical trace of Monroe's brief time there. The home's historical significance rests entirely on the fact that Monroe died inside it, not on any architectural feature, artifact, or design element that survives.
The city gained a landmark. The owners lost the use of an $8 million property and picked up security bills, trespassing problems, and a federal lawsuit that went nowhere.
None of this happened because the owners broke any rules. They bought the property lawfully. They applied for permits lawfully. The city issued those permits. Only after the sale and the permitting process did Los Angeles change direction and freeze the property in place.
That sequence should trouble anyone who believes in the rule of law and the stability of property rights. If a city can approve your plans, collect your fees, and then reverse itself under political pressure, leaving you holding the bag, then permits are worth less than the paper they are printed on.
The situation in Brentwood is not unlike other recent cases where courts have been asked to revisit government decisions that blocked or reversed previously approved projects. The pattern is the same: government acts, private parties bear the cost, and the legal system sorts out the wreckage.
The dismissal leaves several important questions unanswered. The court's specific reasoning has not been made public in detail. It is unclear whether the judge ruled on the merits of the takings claim or dismissed the case on procedural grounds. The distinction matters enormously for the owners' next move.
Breemer's statement that the Pacific Legal Foundation is "preparing our next steps" suggests an appeal or an amended filing may be forthcoming. The organization has a long track record of litigating property rights cases to the appellate level and beyond.
Meanwhile, the house still sits on its dead-end street in Brentwood, drawing tourists, trespassers, and traffic to a neighborhood that wanted none of it. The owners still cannot build. The city still has not compensated them.
Los Angeles, a city that cannot manage its own public order on its own streets, found the energy to seize control of a private home in the name of a woman who lived there for half a year more than six decades ago. That tells you something about the city's priorities.
Property rights cases rarely generate the same headlines as criminal trials or political scandals. But they cut to the bone of what it means to own something in America. If a local government can strip your property of its value after you've played by every rule, paid every fee, and secured every permit, and a federal court backs them up, then ownership is conditional on the political mood of City Hall.
Bank and Milstein are not sympathetic underdogs. They paid $8 million for a house in Brentwood. But the principle at stake does not depend on the size of the check. The same logic that lets Los Angeles freeze an $8 million property can freeze a $200,000 house in any neighborhood in the country. The Takings Clause exists precisely to prevent government from treating private property as a public resource without paying for it.
The Pacific Legal Foundation has signaled it will keep fighting. Good. Someone should.
When a city can hand you a permit and then snatch it back, and a court says that's fine, the permit was never really yours to begin with.
