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.
...from my cold dead hands.
That F'ing SOB John Sunnunu. He put that SOB Souter in the court, and the damage that has been done is immense. If the government ever takes my house for a private developer, I am going to burn down Sunnunu's house.
Even the DUers don't like this. When Freepers and DUers can agree on something, you KNOW there's a problem.
You know it.
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.
Yes, revolution, YES!!
Way beyond the pale here. Advocates assassination.
Well, Worcester, MA, can run that new road to its airport now...
Excellent example of why Dubya needs to be able to place at least 2 new justices. Problem is that I don't see the list of liberal justices that voted for this ruling coming up for replacement, but rather those that voted against this unfair ruling.
Walmart wants a build a store on your property...
and guess what, the Supremes say you don't have any say...
I WANT THE NUCLEAR OPTION.
I don't care what the democrats promise they will not do.
One of the problems is that there is no consistanncy. I know of one area that the local courts have ruled that in order for a governement to sieze private property the ownwer needs to be reimbursed to the tune of 3 times FMV. Obviously there's not a hell of a lot of eminant domaine there. There just has to be some consistancy and regard for personal property rights.
I am devastated. I am resorting to the girlie art of crying right now.
My country is dead.
The heading should read: SUPREME COURT CANCELS 5TH AMENDMENT
1 million people have just been evicted from Chicago.
Revolution, anyone?
I'm with you.
Where do we muster?
Do we need a permit?
Who decides the value of the home to be destroyed........oh let me guess.......the ones who will gain the most. I wonder how much they are paying the supreme court for this ruling?
Time for these fuchs to be elected like everybody else.
What has happened to private property rights? Individual rights are being steadily eroded in this country. If you have no property rights, what's left? You can't express your religious beliefs in public. You have to submit to strip searches to board an airplane. Your opportunities for employment are contingent upon whether or not you qualify as a member of a "protected class." Every day, more and more of this cr-p courtesy of some court.
Bush is trying to bring democracy to the Middle East. Maybe he should be spending more time trying to restore it here.
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