On Feb. 2, 2026, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) joined Seyfarth Shaw LLP in filing a state lawsuit in Alameda County, California on behalf of a descendant of Sidney and Iréne Dearing, the first Black homeowners in the city of Piedmont in Alameda in 1924. The Dearings were dispossessed of their home when the city pursued a fraudulent condemnation action against them, claiming in court that Piedmont needed to seize the family’s property to construct a road for public use. The city never built the road, and Plaintiff alleges that the city never intended to do so. The lawsuit challenges the city’s unlawful use of eminent domain to forcibly remove the Dearings because they were Black people.
The forced taking of the Dearings’ property came after a relentless campaign of violence in which city officials failed to protect the Dearings from threats of lynching, multiple attempted bombings, and other racially motivated terror.
This case is part of a long record in California and elsewhere of governmental action to forcibly compel Black people from their land/property, denying Black families of the wealth and other benefits of homeownership, including access to well-resourced public schools and other community resources. While some localities—including Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, and Palm Springs—have issued apologies and compensated descendants of Black people whose property was confiscated, Piedmont has failed to do the same.
In the wealthy enclave of Piedmont, as in other parts of the country, Black families have been systematically excluded from homeownership opportunities not only through eminent domain actions, but also racially restrictive covenants, exclusionary zoning, discriminatory land-use policies, and de facto practices like areas functioning as sundown towns where it’s unsafe for Black people to physically be. These practices and others result in racial wealth disparities that persist today. They also result in ongoing racially and economically segregated neighborhoods and communities. For example, we are not aware that another Black family owned a home in Piedmont until at least the 1950s or 1960s, and today less than 2% of Black people live in Piedmont.
The lawsuit seeks redress for Piedmont’s actions that deprived the Dearings of their home, generational wealth, and other benefits of home ownership.
