I'm not attacking you personally.
But in this case, the ballot box IS available. The court was not ruling that an individual could take your house no matter what your legislature says.
It was saying that if the local legislature decides to do this, it can do so.
In this particular incident, all that was necessary was for enough people in the city to rise up and vote out the council that approved this deal, and it could be stopped.
But a majority of the people WANTED this to happen. They were HAPPY with it, or too stupid to know better.
I think it is important for all of us in these debates to distinguish between cases where we want the government to be allowed to work the majority will but the Supreme Court says individual rights are more important (LIKE, FOR EXAMPLE, ABORTION) and cases where we want the Supreme Court to keep the government from doing things to individuals but the Supreme Court says it is up to the majority of voters (LIKE, FOR EXAMPLE, THIS RULING, or the MARIJUANA RULING).
There are principled constitutional issues in both cases, but they are not the same problem (except at the highest level of "misinterpreting the constitution").
I would also argue that, for a strict federalist, wouldn't we want the US court to say that federal constitutional rights restrict the FEDERAL government, but not our local governments?
Depends on the direction of the power.