RE: It’s provided for in the Constitution. Government can take your property provided it’s for a public purpose and you are paid just compensation. If the Founders were OK with that, so am I.
The intended purpose of eminent domain, is to allow government to acquire properties for true public uses like a highway ( as you mentioned) or a school or critical public infrastructure or defense of the nation.
The Kelo decision that Trump still says he supports DID NONE OF THAT.
It opened the door to even more eminent domain mischief. Eminent domain was already a useful tool for the politically friendly developer, who is only too happy to enlist the force of government to aggregate properties that are difficult to acquire one by one.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the city, but the minority (Justices O’Connor, Scalia, and Thomas, along with Chief Justice William Rehnquist) wrote extremely heated dissenting opinions. Thomas warned: “Today’s decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is a meaningful limit on the government’s eminent domain power. Our cases have strayed from the clause’s original meaning, and I would reconsider them.”
As it turned out, the City of New London’s great economic plan never came to fruition and the properties it seized stand 13 years later as a huge vacant lot, after the city and state governments blew $78 million bulldozing the properties.
THAT is what you should understand as to why this is a controversy.
Legal quibbling over what does or does not constitute a “public purpose” doesn’t really mean very much in the real world. The public purpose is defined as something a legitimate public entity defines it as. If they get out of hand, it’s up to the citizens of that particular locality to throw the bums out, not for nine men in black robes to decide what’s a “true” public purpose or not. The poor old widow that’s about to lose her house doesn’t care whether there’s going to be a highway or a shopping mall built there.