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.
This is about the government seizing your property on behalf of a private individual (or group thereof). Do you understand how ominous that is? Do you own anything besides the clothes on your back and the matter in your colon?
I had forgotten about Jesse James, too.
Won't be effective in my small corrupt town... lol. I can hear them now: What is that crazy homeschooler doing now?
Most Amercians only want their gov retirement and medical bills paid for, low gas prices, and Blockbuster videos on Fridays.
They know nothing except what Peter, Dan, and Tom have told them for the last 40 years.
The land was given (cheap) to Burlington Northern to open up the west. BN, through Plum Creek, logged this land -(read: raped the land)
A century later, Plum Creek is running out of timber, so instead of replanting then harvesting the land responsibly, they are going to sale it to developers. Huge tract housing will go in. Those that bought near Plum Creek land, in hopes that they would always have wilderness around them, will soon find that their property tax is going up along with an army of new neighbors.
Private Industry, with the help of Government, was made rich, the public got screwed - once again.
"Actually it is...any attempt to overthrow the government is considered a threat."
King George didn't like it, that's for sure.
The entire Constitution is available on line for your edification.
""This article leaves out a big essential and so do the comments thus far.
Maybe this has been said, but they do have to PAY for it, and pay fair market value. It is not seizure in the sense of theft. In the same vein, eminent domain is a seizure but the state has to pay for the property, and for your attorney to prove the value of that property, and for the appraiser, etc. etc.
Eminent domain is a great field. Everybody gets paid.""
What happens then if your attorney can prove your house is worth more then want the developer wants to pay for it.
Do you trust these people, the government and politicians, to make a decision that will suit you or the developer?
You might not get anything.
""but what a bunch of liberal scumbags that voted for this."
Actually, 3 of the 5 who voted for it were appointed by Republicans."
The statement was right, however. Just because they are Republicans doesn't meant they aren't liberal scumbags.
"is there any limits to it?"
No. None. They can simply claim it benefits the government. Period.
It is stealing - just as abortion is murder. State authorized seizure now called "eminent domain" and therefore redefined. But, in your gut, you know it is stealing.
Little broad in your statement, there. You are incorrect.
I believe the time is coming closer and closer.
6/23 America will never be the same again.
And so, "Some of us are more equal than others." Life follows fiction, once again.
Revolution, anyone?
It is coming to this sadly. Who can we get to change it?? I mean the US Supremes are AT the TOP. Is there any authority that can unravel that decision???
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