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.
MY COUNTRY!!!!!!!
Once the pristine land of freedom and opportunity-- now, you are a tired, old whore.
I can't bear this anymore...
Huh? I thought Bush 41 appointed Souter.
Geffen's property wasn't taken under eminent domain, it was a public easement. When he bought two lots to build a mega mansion, he agreed to allow public access to the beach. The path had always been public access, and the only way he got a building permit was to agree to the access.
Ouch! Loss for property owners.
Living next to a strip mall under this decision
This ABSOLUTELY APPALLING.
I read this about a half hour ago and just sat in silence at my computer, totally steamed. They are going to go hog wild in my city. Anywhere they want to shore up that tax base, they might just raze your house and bring in retailer.
Sickening.
Nice reference/allusion.
Go back to DU, Troll. We don't need your brain-dead thinking here.
Roger Hedgecock said on Rush's show that the property owners in CA better get ready to move. Their taxes were frozen by Prop 13, so any excuse to take the property and give it to some other entity that will pay more taxes is now "the common good." The same holds true for church property everywhere that currently is not taxed at all. The time will come when churches will be bumped off their land if Pfizer, Walmart, or Bank of America want the location and will pay taxes on it.
We need conservative judges on the bench. Period.
"Ya'll know what this ruling reeally means. It means us landowners are only SERFS paying rent on property owned by the ruling classes and their government puppets. When they decide to kick us off our own land, they can legally do so."
You got that right. I've maintained for a while that our "land ownership here" is just a ruse. Try missing a few tax payments and you'll find out who really owns it.
Still, this takes it to a new level
You will make a very fine serf.
Nope, it's NOT consistent with "conservative values."
Or at least the Supremes are not--viz. last week's decision to overturn medical maryjane.
That's why you can diagnose this as Statism, rather than 'conservatism.'
Actually, it leaves me living in my apartment, because there is no way I am going to plunk down that kind of money to buy something that a handful of two-bit sleazy politicans can just take on a whim.
Great, now you only have to be a mayor to be a despot.
I am running for mayor now so that we can evict all the
millionaires from the beach front properties and make
them public beaches. What right do they have to own
that beach privately? My platform :
"REACH FOR A BEACH FOR EACH AND EVERYONE"
The Supremes simply re-wrote the definition of the term "public purpose."
Bashing the Statists is perfectly acceptable. They were WRONG. I don't care which scumsucker local lawyer wrote the local law--the Supremes are WRONG.
If you think this will be made to go away via the ballot box or the jury box, you are sadly mistaken. Thinking like that is how we got here in the FIRST place.
Good points. I was only listing the solutions given by others here so far, including amendments on both the federal and state levels.
I don't want to see new laws enacted either. But, the Fifth Amendment's "just compensation" leaves it wide open. The courts aren't limiting eminent domain. Not even the USSC is limiting it.
Ever read Unintended Consequences by John Ross? If not, do it.
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