> If it is something that could have been objected to by the original seller (they would have had standing to sue) and they have not agreed to change the covenant (because they are dead), it seems as if anyone affected should be able to sue.

They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue. In this case, if the original seller died then standing to sue would be inherited (I believe). If the inheritor doesn’t care, then neither does the government.

There’s also a bunch of weird edges. Like if the land just isn’t usable as a park because it’s too out of the way to be worth maintenance or building it would be insane because it’s a literal swamp, what is the city supposed to do with that? Own it and just do nothing with it in perpetuity?

> If there is a covenant that says that the land will be a park, that's the "zoning" by the seller being stricter than local zoning, which means that it also conforms to local zoning.

Sellers don’t get to do any zoning, the city does. You can add a covenant that says a single family home in San Francisco can only be used for fracking, despite the fact that there’s no oil and zoning wouldn’t allow it.

> I can sue Facebook if they allow another user to violate their terms of service.

No, you can’t. Or rather, you can file it, but it will be tossed out immediately. There is no tort for failing to enforce your own ToS. You might be able to sue Facebook for negligently failing to stop a user from breaking an actual law.

It’s against Facebook ToS to use a name other than your legal name on your account. How confident are you that you could win a lawsuit against Facebook because Post Malone’s account isn’t named “Austin Post”?

▲

thaumasiotes an hour ago | parent [-]

> They don’t because it’s a private agreement, so only the involved parties can sue.

That isn't generally how legal restrictions on the use of real estate work. They're just part of the property.

Compare https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/real_covenant :

> Real covenants affect the landowner’s property rights and “run with the land,” meaning that future owners of the property are bound by the covenant.

Since there's a covenant on this land, the current owners are bound by it, regardless of the terms of sale they thought they were getting.

The reason that restrictions on real estate work this way is pretty simple: ownership of real estate is tracked in a giant centralized registry, so arbitrary restrictions can be recorded there.

Is this a good idea as a policy matter? Absolutely not. But we have the law we have.

	▲	everforward 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Go look at their page for “covenant”, because “real covenant” is a subtype that only specifies the ways it’s different from a non-property covenant https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/covenant Quoting from that page: “The party capable of enforcing the covenant depends on whether the burden or the benefit runs with the land. In other words, only the party who the covenant is designed to help can enforce it.” Your page spells out the other relevant bits. Real covenants must benefit one party at the expense of another (horizontal privity), so the heirs of the man who donated the land are the benefactors. That it helps (or at least doesn’t harm) the neighbor does not make them the benefactor here because their benefit was incidental (ie they aren’t legally “the benefactor”). Covenants being centrally registered is a matter of convenience when house shopping, not a declaration that the state will enforce them. I’d actually bet there are a lot of houses that have racial segregation covenants on them still because the benefactors quit trying to enforce them. I know my city has a bunch of racist laws on the books still because the city quit enforcing them ages ago, city council doesn’t want to spend time revoking laws that haven’t been used in 50 years, and no one has standing to sue to revoke them unless they get arrested for them.