Posted on 06/23/2005 8:07:27 AM PDT by Stew Padasso
Supreme Court rules cities may seize homes
HOPE YEN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A divided Supreme Court ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth conflicts with individual property rights.
Thursday's 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.
As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.
Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.
"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including - but by no means limited to - new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.
He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.
At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for "public use."
Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Conn., filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.
New London officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.
The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with many allowing a taking only if it eliminates blight.
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Nationwide, more than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice, a Washington public interest law firm representing the New London homeowners.
New London, a town of less than 26,000, once was a center of the whaling industry and later became a manufacturing hub. More recently the city has suffered the kind of economic woes afflicting urban areas across the country, with losses of residents and jobs.
The New London neighborhood that will be swept away includes Victorian-era houses and small businesses that in some instances have been owned by several generations of families. Among the New London residents in the case is a couple in their 80s who have lived in the same home for more than 50 years.
City officials envision a commercial development that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.
New London was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities, which argued that a city's eminent domain power was critical to spurring urban renewal with development projects such Baltimore's Inner Harbor and Kansas City's Kansas Speedway.
Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to "just compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth Amendment. However, Kelo and the other homeowners had refused to move at any price, calling it an unjustified taking of their property.
The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.
Very quickly!
So, what's your point.
When does it end?
Excellent, depressing point.
It wouldn't do any good.They are the bench for life and couldn't give a damn. Put you efforts at reminding your senators on putting a REAL CONSERVATIVE on the bench and not some half ass, puppet of Big Business and Big Government.
When they come to take my familys' 130+yrear old family farm cause some developer bribed some local judge, they'll need more than a slip of paper and the local Barney Fife to kick us out of our home.
Conservatives all believe in the sancity of private property as well as life.
Is that the sound of home made bullets being dug up from backyards all over the country?
Come on, people, what the heck are we gonna do with our country? We are slowly but surely being transformed into a lefty, liberal, European wasteland.
I say we go back to the days of the wild West, when I could have a shoot out with anyone I had a legitimate beef with. This really, really pisses me off.
Are you receiving any of my e-mails todya?
The first intelligent comment I have read in this thread.
Isn't there a bill pending in Congress that would establish some definitions on what constitutes "the public interest" and set some boundries to "eminent domain" takings?
I like the 3 x FMV parameter set by the locality you mention for compensating private property owners. Not that it would stay a major development project but it would at least make the local government think twice about using the power of eminent domain capriciously.
Of course, the best way to deal with a heavy handed local council is to vote them out of office and then seize THEIR property for the "public good."
Is it time yet?
This is just to disturbing for words to describe...
"Conservatives all believe in the sancity of private property as well as life."
Are you speaking of "Conservative" politicians?
If so, I would say this is true only if it suits their purpose.
The govt determines what is FMV. They can condemn it, and then determine FMV, which might be 25% of actual.
Instantly. And those who are advocating some sort of "revolution" need to understand that their advocacy of revolution in a public forum may not be in their best interests.
In the first place, it's not going to happen. Talk is cheap. In the second place, I like Free Republic, and hope that people making wild statements do not ruin it for the rest of us.
Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.From the Declaration of Independence. Is our government here yet? makes one think
Ping
It's war.
I don't know, but I heard that property taxes and real estate prices are much higher in Canada. Taxes in general are higher. I hope we don't get to the point where we will have to move to Canada, because it is a freer country.
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