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.
You might as well go and become a lawyer or a politician. No one else could have had such a complete conscience-ectomy.
Don't forget pushing the new book and coffee mugs.
Five. Assholes. Plain and simple.
Claire is wrong. Revolutionaries never make good leaders. Sad but true. Our system works because we can change the laws. We don't have "law of elites", we have the rule of law. Which means we make the laws, we can unmake the laws.
Florida has a law that forbids taking someone's home under these circumstances. Other states can change their laws. And it they can't, it means more people believe it's OK for the state to steal someone's home, than people who think it's wrong. And that's OK. It's how our system works. Only thugs take their ball home if they don't get their way. Let's play fair. Change the law in every state, work for conservative judges, and be gracious when we lose. ( But, we're not going to lose this one... )
No, it is not how our system works. We have a republic, not a majority-rules democracy, and the U.S. Constitution is the rule of law, not what 9 black-robed elitists say it is.
I believe in the Constitution. I take our rights very seriously. I couldn't care less whether "...more people believe it's OK for the state to steal someone's home, than people who think it's wrong." Completely irrelevant.
Claire Wolfe is absolutely correct.
This is so un-American. Those justices should be ashamed of themselves. Bad justices, bad, bad, bad justices.
| More to the Story about Poletown....... by Larry Lawver |
The following are my personal insights about the Michigan Supreme Court's July 2004 decision overturning their infamous "Poletown" ruling of 1981, a travesty which had set the precedent for a wave of eminent domain abuses across the country. The Detroit Free Press article about it is, in my opinion, incomplete if not somewhat misleading. I was a Detroit area resident as the original mess was unfolding, and there is more to the story than the liberal Detroit Free Press would tell. In particular, this is the SECOND time the courts have repudiated the eminent domain abuse at the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant, later known as Poletown.
Everyone who lived anywhere around Detroit before 1980 knows the story of Dodge Main. The Dodge brothers started building it in 1910, and it eventually grew to a sprawling, three story, five million square foot body-on-chassis assembly plant. For six decades, Dodge Main produced affluence for a thriving community of businesses, neighborhoods, and the City of Hamtramck (not a misspelling!) in Wayne County. Hamtramck became a successful destination for thousands of immigrants from Poland, and their children became my friends while I lived there.
The City of Detroit annexed most of the rest of Wayne County, and Hamtramck became an encircled enclave, powered by the economic output of Dodge Main. In the seventh decade, Chrysler's incompetence and changing technology combined to kill the plant. Lee Iacocca and Jimmy Carter abandoned it in 1980.
After about 1977, it was clear that efficient auto assembly plants now required two key elements: Transportation access (rail, water, highway) and about a square mile of flat space. New automobile assembly plants were springing up around the planet where space was near transportation. Dodge Main had two excess floors, great transportation, and no space to expand in an urban enclave. Detroit area governments decided to do whatever it took to redevelop the area. Lee Iacocca and Jimmy Carter gave them Dodge Main.
The neighborhoods around Dodge Main were devastated when it closed, but not dead. Hundreds of businesses that were started to serve Dodge Main had already acquired contracts with the other auto plants, and continued to employ local residents. The area was severely damaged, though, and the property owners would have taken any reasonable offer to salvage what was left in their asset.
In the shadow of the Jimmy Carter Depression, Detroit area governments were in panic. Then, General Motors decided to build a new assembly plant, billed as the last automobile assembly plant that would ever be built in the United States. (Wrong.)
Detroit, Wayne County, and Michigan conspired to make the ultimate giveaway to GM: We will come if you will build it!
To clear the space GM needed around the old Dodge Main site, Wayne County had to clear out nearly 2000 homes, businesses, churches, etc. In a rushed process, Wayne County made lowball offers, then used eminent domain to take the property needed to fulfill GM's requirements as quickly as possible. Businesses, homes, and churches were disrupted and began to sue.
Throughout the Eighties, courts slammed the government with damage rewards that valued the siezed properties at values the government was unwilling to pay. In the end, former Poletown property owners received hundreds of millions of dollars in excess of what the government thought it had to pay under eminent domain.
If GM had offered the property owners a reasonable price for their blighted land, they would have sold overwhelmingly. Instead, government stole the property and paid dearly on the back end.
While I could cite thousands of things that were wrong with General Motors in those days, I want to note that GM didn't ask for what happened, and in fact delivered their requirements for the site in a "this is why it can't be done" format. When it became clear that the local governments were going to do it, GM had to get on board for fiduciary reasons: The once impossible site was going to be the
best place on earth for an assembly plant, and if they turned it down, another auto company (including possibly Chrysler!) would have jumped on it.
GM did not choose to redevelop Dodge Main on its own because it was cheaper to develop a greenfield site somewhere else. Dodge Main could have been redeveloped privately for any number of uses. A good example at the time was the very similar Packard plant on the other side of Detroit. Packard hadn't built a car for about thirty years, but the building survived and housed dozens of companies.
Dodge Main would have been redeveloped, but not as an automotive assembly plant. The flaw in eminent domain is that government, not the market, picks the best and highest use of a property. In this case, the market decided that this was not a good place for an assembly plant any more. Chrysler itself, owning the valuable property at the center, gave it away and built a greenfield plant in
central Pennsylvania instead!
The local governments were rather quickly spanked by the court awards to the owners of the stolen properties. Thirty years later, the basic concept has finally been repudiated. Thousands of people were damaged, including two groups that don't physically exist because of the force of government: The redevelopers of Dodge Main, and the neighbors and owners of the site, somewhere in this country, where GM would have built a $750M assembly plant for sound economic reasons.
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| Larry Lawver is an industrial automation consultant and entrepreneur in central Florida |
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| See this recap (with relevant resource links) by Reason editor Jacob Sullum |
| and this one by O.C. Register columnist Steven Greenhut |
BRAVO!!
The "Problem Is," that the "Isolated Individuals" of the "Supreme Court" are UTTERLY IGNORANT OF the Effects of Their "Decisions."
You're RIGHT;-- Someone HAS TO WREST Control of the Property of one of the "Surpremes" to build a MALL.
Until the "Denizens" of the "Supreme Court" are "Faced With" the CONSEQUENCES OF Their UNCONSTITUTIONAL DECISIONS; The "Damn Fools" will Continue to FORGET the BASIS of our "Constitution!!"
Personal Property Rights are KEY TO the Freedoms of our Nation.
The Decision to allow ANY "Governmental Entity" to Usurp the "Property Rights" of the "Legitimate Owners" of ANY PROPERTY is "FLAT_OUT-UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!"
If I Buy a "Piece of Land,"--& I can Produce a "Bill of Sale,"--ABOLUTELY NO ONE has a "RIGHT TO" "SUPERCEDE" my "Bill of Sale," UNLESS a Claim of "Emmininent Domain" is made by a "Connected Bureocrat!"
We don't have sales or income tax here. Just property tax. What are the Socialistas going to do? It's a quandry.
This sucks to high heaven!
Especially since cities these days are run by some of the most corrupt, self serving liberals in the world.
If this statement is altered slightly to : some cities are run by some of the most corrupt, self serving despots it might have more validity.
I have pretty much given up the idea of retairing to Mississippi.
No, that's not what I meant - I'm saying each State can trump these nutty liberal judges. Florida has a law on the books that forbids what these judges say is OK, and that law stands. Until we can get judges who hold up the law rather than making the law, we're stuck with roundabout patches. But patches work. And if it matters, get your state to write a law until we can get more conservative judges in the SC.
Claire Wolfe is a revolutionary and we're just not there. It's not perception that matters, it's reality that matters. And as long as we can trump these nutty judges with state laws the system works. We can vote the liberals out, and by doing that get a more conservative court. That's our way. And it might not be the best way, but it's better than anything else the world offers.
CNN put up a poll on their website today: Who should be able to seize properties? Government, businesses, or no one. About 66% of voters said No one. That's quite a low number. But anyway, they took the poll down and replaced it with another question. I was surprised that they removed this poll so quickly.
Yes indeed. Public officials who put their names onto these property thefts had better stand by for the application of Rule 308.
That's a more detailed anaysis than I have, and a good one. Thanks.
Detroit argued before the Michigan Supreme Court that seizing the property would be a “public good” because it would bring more cash to the city’s coffers. This, of course, is an outlandish and illegal rewriting of the constitution by a prior Michigan court. The key here is expanding the phrase “public use” into the “public good.” Public use is taking property to build roads and schools for the public to use. Public good is stealing property based on ever-changing political whims for shopping malls, open space, biological diversity or whatever the politicians want it to mean.
Nonetheless, the court in 1981 thought this theft was a swell idea and ruled that it was okay to bulldoze 465 acres, destroying 1,400 homes, 140 businesses, and several churches.
Critics contended that this seizure destroyed more jobs than it created. Time proved them right. At its height, the plant employed less than 60 percent of the workers that the conniving politicians had promised.
In the July, 2004 ruling, the court correctly studied this matter from the view of original intent. In other words, what did the lawmakers originally mean when the law was written?
Justice Robert Young called this seizure of property under Poletown “a radical departure from fundamental constitutional principles.”
“In this case (The County of Wayne v. Hathcock ),” wrote the court, “Wayne County intends to transfer the condemned properties to private parties in a manner wholly inconsistent with the common understanding of ‘public use’ at the time our Constitution was ratified.”
The court rejected the argument of local governments that “a private entity’s pursuit of profit was a ‘public use’ for constitutional takings purposes simply because one entity’s profit maximization contributed to the health of the general economy.” Taking private property for the benefit of private investors is wrong.
Those aren't necessarily liberals. They might be something else that shall not be named.
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