A Judge Voided the Deal Behind SoFi Stadium. $400 Million Is at Stake.

Kroenke's Hollywood Park says it may appeal, and Inglewood's lawyer says the city now owes the SoFi developer nothing.

The 2015 development agreement Inglewood used to clear the way for SoFi Stadium is void, Superior Court Judge David Reinert ruled on September 1, 2026. The decision was first reported by The LA Local, whose account also ran on LAist.

About $400 million rides on it. Companies tied to Stan Kroenke, who brought the Rams to the old Hollywood Park racetrack site, say Inglewood owes them that much for the infrastructure and other investment they paid for up front. The city's repayment was designed to wait until the site was rich enough to cover it: in any year the development produced $25 million in tax revenue for Inglewood, the city would chip away at the debt. The companies say Inglewood crossed that line in 2022 and every year since.

Inglewood's answer was that it doesn't owe anything, because the agreement was never enforceable. Businesses that operate SoFi Stadium, YouTube Theater and other property on the 300-acre site sued in December 2025.

The city's argument leaned on a later case in the Inland Empire, where a court threw out a comparable development agreement. Reinert agreed with the city and went further, writing that the process behind the Inglewood contract was defective from the beginning. A project this size normally moves through hearings, reviews and voter approval, a run that can take years. Inglewood and the developer shortened it by collecting more than 22,000 signatures instead.

State law expects a development agreement to be negotiated between the parties and left open to a voter referendum, and the initiative route didn't meet that test, the judge wrote. California courts had been calling similar arrangements “wholly void” since the 1990s. The City Council approved the stadium plan unanimously in February 2015.

Hollywood Park hasn't appealed. A spokesperson told The LA Local the company could, and pushed back on the outcome: “We respectfully disagree with the Court's ruling.” The spokesperson said Hollywood Park has met every commitment under a deal the city adopted unanimously and has benefited from for more than a decade, and asked the city to honor its side.

Skip Miller, lead counsel for the city of Inglewood, called it a major win in a press release. “It means that without a valid development agreement, Hollywood Park/SoFi Stadium no longer has vested rights and that the City has no further obligations under the 2015 Development Agreement,” he said.

The break didn't start in court. Mayor James Butts first told Kroenke and his employees in letters last year that he considered the agreement void, after the stadium businesses fought the city's plan to put dozens of digital billboards near the stadium with an LA advertising agency. In one letter, Butts wrote that the city's lawyers wanted back the $20 million Inglewood had already paid in reimbursements.

That billboard fight is still running, and it has moved from the courtroom onto the November 3 ballot. The calendar isn't waiting either: SoFi Stadium is set to host the Super Bowl in 2027 and the Opening Ceremony of the 2028 Olympics.

Butts told The LA Local the city agrees with the ruling as it stands, and that he'd like to work out a path forward with the developer. He didn't say whether any talks are scheduled.

Source: laist.com, retrieved September 13, 2026.