HIGH COURT WON'T STOP LAND SEIZURES

[Nevada]

I have real issues with this....if the land isnt for public use ie roads, schools then they shouldn't be allowed to yank away folks homes, compensation or not, to build a mall

High court won't stop land seizures

10:37 AM CDT on Thursday, June 23, 2005


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.

[Eric McTavish]

oh great! So what exactly does "just compensation" mean now that they can just outright seize a home??? Can the offer 50K on a 100K home and give you the option take the money or we seize it anyway? How wonderfull!

[RichardMacHugely]

oh great! So what exactly does "just compensation" mean now that they can just outright seize a home??? Can the offer 50K on a 100K home and give you the option take the money or we seize it anyway? How wonderfull!

No, they can't. And what the court has really ruled is that local governments, not the Feds, have the best idea of what constitutes the "common good" of their own communities. The Court has left open the possibility for further action and legislation should local property owners be "unduly burdened".

[Nevada]

So basically the city has the power to do this and the Fed. justices won't do anything to stop them...correct?

[Lady Laurel]

This is very worrisome to me. Also you've got to think of cities that are growing so quickly like Houston, that has problems with this. Anytime the government has power to Sieze anything its not always good. This is another Civil liberty that may have been deleted.

[RichardMacHugely]

[code]Anytime the government has power to Sieze anything its not always good[/code]

The Constitution gives the government the right to condemn and sieze property for the "common good" already. Usually, this has been done to build roads, flood valleys for reservoirs, etc. All the SC ruling has done is give the local authorities more say in what they think the "local good" is. A person whose property is at risk of being condemned can still file a lawsuit to protect themselves, and if local governments start overreaching, they will start losing those legal challenges.

[Ysobelle]

Yes, but how likely is it, do you think, that the government will lose those cases, Richard? The scope of what constitutes a "public use" has been broadened, and I think it chilling.

Of course, part of that shiver is from being on the same side of any issue as Scalia.

[Captain Stamina]

‘Public’ use has now been defined as receiving more tax revenue from a business and those that it employs, than can be collected from the existing housing and businesses for a given tract of land.

Remember your house or business has a property tax based on what the local government thinks your house/business is worth. When eminent domain is invoked, you don’t get the value that you’re being taxed at, you get a much lower figure; and you have to take it or get nothing.

Now for all the additional costs you’ll have to incur like finding a new place to live, paying for your own moving expenses, let’s not forget you’ll most likely have to travel further to get to work, so more wear and tear on your car and additional gas prices.

Once this has happened, you and many other will move out into the country, away from the city, and begrudge the fact that now you’ll have to travel to obtain the connivances that you once had. But wait, another developer has come along and has determined that he can put up a resort where you’ve just moved. Guess what, it has just started again.

Some states are lucky, their state constitutions are written in such a way that when eminent domain is invoked, it must be for public use.

[Eric McTavish]

an editorial....

Posted on Fri, Jun. 24, 2005
High court sticks it to the little guy
BY STEVEN GREENHUT
The Orange County Register

(KRT) - When the leader of the city of New London, Conn.,'s development corporation was asked about her role in driving middle-class residents out of their well-kept homes to make way for condos, a hotel and upscale shopping, she made a chilling declaration. "Anything that's working in our great nation is working because somebody left skin on the sidewalk," she said, according to the Institute for Justice, which challenged that redevelopment plan in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Well, the nation's high court on Thursday, in a rebuttal to views of the nation's founders, declared that any property owner anywhere in America can be called on by government to leave their skin on the sidewalk. The good of the individual must yield to the good of the community, as defined by government officials. That's now the law of the land, and expect its impact to be felt widely.

In Kelo v. the City of New London, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that eminent domain - the power to take property by force, upon "just" compensation to the owner - was justified for almost any reason. The Fifth Amendment allows it only for public uses, i.e., which has long been interpreted to mean major public uses such as a highway or dam, but the majority overruled that "outdated" notion. They cited a case stating that the "court long ago rejected any literal requirement that condemned property be put into use for the general public."

I keep forgetting that the Constitution is a living and breathing document, so its words don't really mean what they seem to mean. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, has a far more "enlightened" vision of the Fifth Amendment than the one held by the founders. It's OK to take property by force and give it to a private developer as long as the city created a "carefully considered" development.

"In addition to creating jobs, generating tax revenue, and helping to `build momentum for the revitalization of downtown New London,' ... the plan was also designed to make the city more attractive and to create leisure and recreational opportunities on the waterfront and in the park," Stevens wrote.

This means government officials, who are driven by their own agendas of increasing tax revenue and overseeing the "right" developments in their city, can trump traditional notions of property rights.

We've seen thousands of instances of abuse in recent years. In Orange County, Calif., the city of Cypress invoked eminent domain against a church so that it could transfer the prime property to Costco. Although the plan failed, the city's reasoning was straightforward: Church members would have to lose their skin so the city would gain increased tax revenue from a big-box store. In Garden Grove, Calif., the city tried to force out an entire neighborhood of well-kept suburban homes - it was stopped after protests - to make way for a theme park. In Lakewood, Ohio, the city tried to use eminent domain to clear away a historic lakefront neighborhood so that it could build upscale condos.

Expect to see more of these attempts nationwide, although state courts and legislatures can still offer protection for property owners.

The irony is liberals claim to speak for the downtrodden and conservatives supposedly stick up for the big developers. Yet the liberals on the court - John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter - and the middle-of-the-road Anthony Kennedy have endorsed a world in which the little guy must always yield to the politically powerful. The conservatives - Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor - stood up for the little guy.

Justice O'Connor captured the essence of the problem with the ruling in her eloquently written dissent:

"Today the court abandons this long-held basic limitation on government power. Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded. ... The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations."

In a world without property rights, the powerful rule and the little guy gets to leave his skin on the sidewalk. Welcome to that world.

---

ABOUT THE WRITER

Steven Greenhut is senior editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif. He is author of the book "Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain.")

[KissMeKate]

I was very disappointed to hear about this. Yet another case of money winning out.

The additional burden in this case is that many of these people are being forced out of homes that their family has lived in for 3-4 generations and some were built by the family that is still there. Unfortunately, it may be too late, but in a case like this, filing for a historic neighborhood might have been an option.

One case where eminent domain was a good thing concerned a number of homes in a 100-year floodplain. After their houses were inundated 3 times in less than 10 years, the city decided they should buy the homes (at more than average value) and return the land to it best use, being a floodplain.