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House votes to overturn Supreme Court decision on eminent domainBy Pete Kasperowicz - 02/28/12 05:19 PM ET The House on Tuesday afternoon approved legislation that overturns a 2005 Supreme Court decision that affirmed the ability of states to take control of private property under the doctrine of eminent domain and hand it to another private developer. That decision, Kelo v. City of New London, led to sharp complaints in particular from Republicans, who argued that the Court ignored the normal "public use" standard. Under that standard, eminent domain was seen as permissible only when the land or property taken would...

Don’t be fooled by The Donald. Take it from one who knows: I’m a South Jersey gal who was raised on the outskirts of Atlantic City in the looming shadow of Trump’s towers. All through my childhood, casino developers and government bureaucrats joined hands, raised taxes and made dazzling promises of urban renewal. Then we wised up to the eminent-domain thievery championed by our hometown faux free-marketeers. America, it’s time you wised up to Donald Trump’s property redistribution racket, too.

There’s good news and bad news. First, the bad. As we all know, there just aren’t enough places to play skee-ball in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Which just ain’t right. But fear not. The good news rights that wrong. I have found the perfect location for skee ball this side of Steel Pier. Unfortunately for Mount Holly mayor Tom Gibson, that location happens to be where his house now sits. Hey, stuff happens. All that remains to be done is grease the political skids and file the paperwork required to seize Gibby’s house through eminent domain. Isn’t it great when...

Utah Invokes Eminent Domain Against the Federal Government By ELIE MYSTAL This is the kind of story that sounds unbelievable — until you realize that it’s dealing with the people who run Utah. The WSJ Law Blog reports: Utah Governor Gary Herbert on Saturday authorized the use of eminent domain to take some of the U.S. government’s most valuable parcels. A state is invoking the Takings Clause against the federal government? This reminds me of the time I came home and my dog told me to get off the couch. Sure, I was surprised that my dog was (a) talking...

Two measures OKd by Gov. Gary R. Herbert would allow use of eminent domain to take valuable sites. A long court fight is likely. Supporters hope the bills, which the Republican governor signed Saturday, will trigger a flood of similar legislation throughout the West and, eventually, a U.S. Supreme Court battle that it hopes to win -- against long odds. More than 60% of Utah is owned by the U.S. government, and policy makers complain that federal ownership hinders their ability to generate tax revenue and adequately fund public schools... Initially, the state would target three areas, including the Kaiparowits...

Utah governor, aiming for court battle, approves use of eminent domain to take federal land SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Fed up with federal ownership of more than half the land in Utah, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert on Saturday authorized the use of eminent domain to take some of the U.S. government's most valuable parcels. Herbert signed a pair of bills into law that supporters hope will trigger a flood of similar legislation throughout the West, where lawmakers contend that federal ownership restricts economic development in an energy-rich part of the country. Governments use eminent domain to take private property...

An entire neighborhood was uprooted to make way for a big money development which will never be built!Want to know why people are mad at the nexus between big government and big money? The Famous 'Kelo House' Property Is Now A Vacant Lot By John Carney The Business Insider Law Review Nov. 10, 2009 What you are looking at above is a monument to government folly. It is the vacant lot where the home of Susette Kelo once stood. A decade ago, the town of New London, Connecticut claimed Kelo's house by right of eminent domain. The plan was to...

I read in Newsweek that an Eminent Domain case is going to be heard this term by SCOTUS ... Does anyone have the case name or know when it is on the docket for oral argument ???

Using its power of eminent domain, the city of Houston seized the land for the park from brothers James and Jock Collins last year. Officials claimed there was a "public necessity" for the park in the Uptown area, despite the fact that a much larger one — the 4.7-acre Grady Park — is just two blocks away. What will the new "pocket park" be used for? That's hard to say. The city has yet to draw up any plans for the land at the corner of Post Oak Lane and San Felipe. In fact, city parks director Joe Turner testified...

GRANJENO, Texas (AP) - Founded 240 years ago, this sleepy Texas town along the Rio Grande has outlasted the Spanish, then the Mexicans and then the short-lived independent Republic of Texas. But it may not survive the U.S. government's effort to secure the Mexican border with a steel fence. A map obtained by The Associated Press shows that the double- or triple-layer fence may be built as much as two miles from the river on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande, leaving parts of Granjeno and other nearby communities in a potential no-man's-land between the barrier and the water's...

Hanover Public School District Superintendent Jill Dillon said filing preliminary objections to Hanover Borough's use of eminent domain to take the recreation field, as well as Myers Memorial Playground, from the district costs between $185 and $425 an hour based on the skill, experience and seniority of the individuals performing the tasks. (snip) And as for the cost. "It certainly will not be cheap, that's for sure, for either side," Glenn said. Glenn said it seemed like an interesting case with one public entity taking property from another. He studies eminent domain on a federal level, not at the state...

Arlington, Va—“Your money or your property” may soon become the mantra of politically connected developers nationwide as the result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement today that it will not consider the appeal of an eminent domain case involving attempted private extortion. The case the Court declined to review arose out of the Village of Port Chester, N.Y., one of the nation’s worst eminent domain abusers. The Village’s chosen developer approached property owner Bart Didden and his business partner with an offer they couldn’t refuse. Because Didden planned to build a CVS on his property—land the developer coveted for a...

Republicans, This Is Why You MUST Vote!Written by Doc FarmerMonday, November 6 2006ChronWatch.com Tomorrow is Election Day. The miracle provided to you by the Founding Fathers in 1776, and protected and preserved for you by the blood of our best. A miracle that most Americans, sadly, take for granted. Don't be one of those who take it for granted. Especially if you're a rep/con/tair -- my more accurate term for the so-called "right". An amalgam of the core political constructs of Republicans, conservatives and libertarians. For many, many months, you've been told that the lib/dem/soc/commies (my more accurate term for...

A small band of archers has been shooting bows and arrows for 37 years on a range in the Pike National Forest north of Deckers, paying the U.S. Forest Service about $450 a year for a permit. This year it will all end because the Forest Service presented the Columbine Bowmen with a bill for $23,000 for the one-year permit, said club president Tom Younger. The same fate faces the 180 or so members of the Buffalo Creek Gun Club, who shoot targets in the Pike forest near Bailey. The club's annual permit fee of $150 over the past 40...

Joy and Carl Gamble bought an English stucco house in Norwood, Ohio, in 1969. They raised two children there and worked seven days a week in their small grocery store to pay off the mortgage. “ We had the house fixed up just the way we liked it,” Carl says. “When we retired, we planned to sit down and enjoy it.” But now the Gambles live in their daughter’s basement. Their house stands vacant in the weedy field that was their neighborhood—seized by the city and transferred to a developer who wants to build shops, offices and condominiums. In Long...

Since the NY Times believes it's in the public interest to put us all at increased risk at the hands of terrorists, and since untold millions will now have to be expended to develop new methods to track terrorist financing I think that a New York city location such as the NY Times building would be better used for some other purpose. And it would seem ironic justice if the same faulty ruling brought to us by the liberal judges be used to rid NY of the terrorist aiding Times. So my challenge is (and be clean) what better use...

City officials use fanciful arguments to explain why, say, a Costco is a public purpose because it brings in more tax revenue than the neighborhood that was there before it. With that simple twist of a phrase, essential constitutional property protections have been obliterated. You might own a small warehouse, but a developer wants to build a new high rise on the site. The government will come in and offer you the value of the warehouse (and will usually lowball the price and often force you to go to court to get a higher price, where you will pay your...

LONG BEACH, Calif. (BP)--City leaders in Long Beach, Calif., have classified the Filipino Baptist Fellowship’s building as a blighted area and are forcing the congregation out in order to make way for condominiums. The path for the case was laid when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last summer in Kelo v. New London, Connecticut that a city’s use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private party to another may qualify as a “public use” protected by the Constitution. John Eastman, director of The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence who is defending the church, said the case -–...

-snip- Last fall Mr. Peterson told a Senate subcommittee that when the government threatens to condemn people's property because it thinks someone else can make better use of it, "a majority of the time, most people agree to sell." Interesting. Given the choice between selling and fighting an expensive legal battle they will almost certainly lose, after which they will have to give up their land anyway, probably on less advantageous terms, most people "agree" to sell. -snip-

ATLANTA — Local governments would be prohibited from condemning private property to put money in the pockets of developers under legislation unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Sonny Perdue. Taking charge of a legislative debate that has spawned dozens of bills, the governor proposed both a constitutional amendment and a law banning eminent domain for economic development purposes. The two measures also would allow only elected officials to make decisions on condemning private properties for any reason. "The government's awesome power of eminent domain should be used sparingly and never be abused for private benefit," Perdue said during a news conference at...

It happened late in January on the FOX network's Hannity and Colmes program, with the pretty blonde, Estrich, in her abrasive voice subbing for the absent abrasive Colmes. The subject was eminent domain, a process by which a government "condemns" private property and takes it for "public" use. Until recently, I had never seen it used for any other purpose than to make way for a road or a public development of some kind. A park, a facility to keep equipment, like fire trucks, in a central location. A place to put a school. Those sorts of things. Then, the...

Date: January 20, 2006 From: Jerry Falwell EMINENT DOMAIN KNOCKING ON CHURCH’S DOOR I learned this week that a small Baptist church in Oklahoma is at risk of losing its place of worship because it sits on a site where city leaders want to build a shopping plaza. This eminent domain business is getting serious. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo ruling last year, we are facing a brand new ballgame in terms of private property and what that term really means. For the Rev. Roosevelt Gildon, pastor of the Centennial Baptist Church in Sand Springs, Okla., eminent domain is...

OAKLAND, Calif. — Revelli Tire ( search) has been a family-owned business in Oakland, Calif., for 56 years. But if action by the city council remains on course, the tire store will have to find a new home or go the way of the dinosaur. In July, using the power of eminent domain, the Oakland City Council evicted John Revelli from his store and locked the doors. The council's argument: One landowner should not impede the progress of a city on the move. "I am being forced to give up and give away all I have worked for all these...

Union Township, N.J. -- Carol Segal has a problem: He wants to build townhouses on the six acres of land he owns in New Jersey's Union Township and has contracted with a developer to build 100 townhouses there. But the township government wants to develop the property themselves, and - incredibly - they have voted to take his land through the eminent domain process and let a local developer with political connections do the job. "They want to steal my land," Segal told the Newark Star-Ledger. "What right do they have when I intend to do the exact same thing...

Real Angry Over Real Estate Why a recent Supreme Court ruling has lots of homeowners hot under the collar By Silla Brush 10/10/05 Stan Dunn and his wife, Barbara, had just sold their home in California and were about to retire to the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga this spring when they heard the rumblings: A developer might tear down their new home--and more than 300 other nearby houses--in order to build a new complex of apartments, townhouses, and businesses to eliminate blight and boost the economy. And while town officials are excited at the prospect, the Dunns say they have...

Lumberton OKs road's location close to house LUMBERTON - In a unanimous 7-0 vote Monday night, the Lumberton City Council approved the proposed location of a connector road that, when built, will run within 50 feet of a paralyzed man's bedroom. "The action plan we passed tonight is part of the design to connect subdivisions to subdivisions in accordance with a city ordinance," Surratt said. "It will help move traffic east to west in our city...." There are four choices now for drivers "He may not get to go boating or fishing. That's his piece of land," Linda Rich said....

Judgment day on eminent domain The state Senate Judiciary Committee today likely will vote on several measures that would curb alarming abuses of eminent domain by California cities and redevelopment agencies. Local governments routinely take property from homeowners and small-business owners and transfer it to large corporations that promise a huge tax windfall to cities that are willing to trample on property rights. A U.S. Supreme Court decision in June - Kelov. City of New London(Conn.) - ruled in favor of such takings, but the public backlash has spurred efforts in most states, including California, to put some limits on...

The Constitution Party invites you to its Fall 2005 National Meeting in Columbus, Ohio on September 16th and 17. Party leaders from across the country will be there and you won't want to miss this event! Special Guest Speaker Tom DeWeese of the American Policy Center will be with us to discuss Property Rights and Eminent Domain. Addresses by the party's 2004 standard bearers, Michael Peroutka and Chuck Baldwin, along with a fine list of other outstanding speakers will inform and inspire us all. For more details, visit: http://www.constitutionparty.com/view_events.php Encourage your friends, family and others to come to Columbus so...

Chuck Douglas: 'New' Justice Souter is not the one I remember By CHUCK DOUGLAS Guest Commentary THIS MONTH marks the 20th anniversary of the New Hampshire Supreme Court decision titled Merrill vs. City of Manchester. That case dealt with the question of public use in exactly the same context as did the recent Kelo vs. New London case in the United States Supreme Court. Justice David Souter sat on both cases but came to totally different conclusions.

A bipartisan group of state lawmakers, spurred by a recent US Supreme Court ruling, is pushing a measure designed to curb the power of Massachusetts cities and towns to take private property to make way for private economic development. [...] Under the measure authored by Representative Bradley H. Jones Jr., the House Republican leader, municipalities would be prevented from taking private property for private development except in cases where the property is ''a substandard, decadent, or blighted open area" under state law. Geoff Beckwith of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which lobbies for cities and towns, says the law would handcuff...

CENTER ANNOUNCES CREATION OF 'PROPERTY RIGHTS FIRST' COALITION, CITES NEED TO STOP 'KELO II' by MONTANA NEWS Washington, D.C.--Today, the American Policy Center joined several organizations concerned with property rights to help form “Property Rights First!,” a coalition designed to push property rights to the center of the debate over the Endangered Species Act. APC is warning that draft legislation released by Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA) titled “The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005” (TESRA 2005) would do more harm than good to American property owners. The Center has dubbed Pombo’s draft bill “Kelo II,” as it represents...

SALISBURY - Rowan County officials paid private investigators more than $23,000 over the past five years to search for the writer of anonymous letters criticizing county spending. According to the private eyes, that person turned out to be one of the county's own. The Board of Commissioners never discussed or approved spending for the investigation at any formal meeting. Only County Manager Tim Russell, his assistants and possibly two commissioners' chairmen knew of the investigation, The Salisbury Post reported. Russell said he hired the agency because of the letters' threatening tone. The investigation was revealed after Kiker Investigations issued a...

July 28, 2005 - Connecticut Voters Say 11 - 1 Stop Eminent Domain, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Connecticut voters say 89 - 8 percent that the state legislature should pass laws limiting the use of eminent domain, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Republican voters support such limits 91 - 8 percent, as Democrats favor limits 85 - 11 percent and independent voters want limits 94 - 5 percent. A total of 61 percent of Connecticut voters "disagree somewhat" or "disagree strongly" with the traditional use of eminent domain to take private property for public uses such as...

Editorial - Only Fools Rush In - Information meeting on eminent domain this week can start a thoughtful debate on the subject. Published on 7/25/2005 On Thursday, legislators will begin reviewing Connecticut's eminent domain laws. The proceeding before the Planning and Development and Judiciary committees is not a formal hearing, but is described as an information session. This meeting will be a good place to set the tone for the state's deliberations on this matter, raised when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city in the Kelo case and reaffirmed the practice of using eminent domain to...

Eminent domain protesters picket Sunday in front of the home of David Goebel, chief operating officer of the New London Development Corporation. By PATRICIA DADDONA Day Staff Writer, Waterford Published on 7/25/2005 New London — Eminent domain activists picketed Sunday evening in front of the home of Fort Trumbull redevelopment leader David M. Goebel as he hosted a dinner party in his back yard. The hourlong march, marked by chants that began, “We won't go,” and ended with “How low can you go?” was the first of many that Coalition to Save Fort Trumbull members and supporters say they intend...

Welcome to Hotel Souter? Eminent domain ruling triggers backlash By BEVERLEY WANG Associated Press Writer WEARE, N.H. Near the foot of an unmarked, dead-end dirt road sits a humble, mud-colored farmhouse. A sign on a mailbox jutting from a tilted post spells "SOUTER." Through the years, U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter has stuck to his family's home in the central New Hampshire town of Weare, population 8,500. A bachelor, the 65-year-old Souter has lived for decades on the 8-acre property, undisturbed among neighbors whose yards are strewn with rusting farm equipment and old pickup trucks. The house, more than...

Surprise Bill Disempowers Communities and Privatizes Surplus Public Lands. With less than 24 hours before a scheduled vote, a radically different bill for disposing of state surplus land was unveiled yesterday. According to Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities (MCHC) board member Nat Fortune "The Legislative leadership is using summer vacation and a last-minute release to get the bill passed before there can be a public response. Considering what’s in this bill, it’s no surprise its proponents were keeping it under the radar.” Jill Stein, MCHC president noted, “This bill takes disempowerment of communities to a new extreme. Like the other...

In the days of the old Republic, Americans lived secure in their homes safe in the knowledge that the fundamental responsibility of government was to protect their lives and property from anyone who threatened them – no matter how rich, powerful or well-connected. If a widow didn’t want to sell her home to a developer, she didn’t have to. That was the end of the matter, unless the developer sent in thugs to beat her up. And government was there to protect her from the thugs. Under the Kelo decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, government has become the thug....

It takes a village ... of property owners Posted: July 21, 2005 By Larry Elder © 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc. It's "almost as if God has spoken," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. To what did the House Democratic leader refer? The Sermon on the Mount? The Martin Luther King Jr. "I have a dream" speech? Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean's latest rant? Go to the head of the class if you guessed Pelosi's remark related to the Kelo v. City of New London property-rights Supreme Court case. In Connecticut's Kelo v. City of New London case, the Supreme Court, in...

Fort Trumbull Advocates Brief Aide To Rell On Change In Law State hears ways to curb eminent domain powers By KATE MORAN Day Staff Writer, New London Published on 7/21/2005 New London — Scott Bullock, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, met Wednesday with the governor's chief counsel to recommend ways the state could change its laws and restrict the ability of local governments to take private property for economic development projects. In the month since it lost its case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Institute for Justice has shifted its mission to constrict eminent domain powers from...

Leggo My Kelo In his piece “Property Rights & Wrongs,” Jonathan Adler defended the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 Kelo decision, which held that cities may use eminent domain to take private houses and give them to private corporations for “economic development.” Whereas the Kelo majority basically acknowledged that its approach was at odds with the original understanding of the Constitution, Adler mysteriously claimed that “the originalist case for a robust, judicially enforceable ‘public use’ limitation is fairly weak.” We should start, as Adler does not, with the Constitution itself. The Fifth Amendment reads “nor shall private property be taken for...

Article Last Updated: 7/18/2005 07:16 AM Congress critical, state lawmakers quiet on ruling State lawmakers stay quiet on property decision PETER URBAN purban@ctpost.com Connecticut Post WASHINGTON — Connecticut lawmakers are taking a back seat in a fast-moving congressional effort to blunt a Supreme Court decision that allows the government to take private land for economic development. The decision, issued June 23 and based on a New London, Conn., case, drew sharp criticism from some members of Congress, who see it as an assault on individual property rights. However, no one from the Connecticut delegation is spearheading efforts to limit the...

Couple says pain of eminent domain ruling eased by states' new debate July 19, 2005, 7:38 PM EDT MINOT, N.D. (AP) _ A U.S. Supreme Court case involving the question of whether cities can take private property for economic development is close to the hearts of Lloyd and Sandy Beachy. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 last month that New London, Conn., had the authority to take homes for a private development project. But it also suggested states may ban the practice. Beachy, the former mayor of New London, and his wife had opposed the city's eminent domain action. Beachy said...

Transforming New London From National Disgrace To National Hero The city and NLDC can have development in Fort Trumbull while letting homeowners, who have shown what it means to be American freedom fighters, stay. There is more land in Fort Trumbull for development than New York has to rebuild the World Trade Center. By SCOTT BULLOCK Published on 7/20/2005 It is ironic that an editorial calling for less heated and “inflammatory” rhetoric about the Fort Trumbull eminent domain controversy accuses the Institute for Justice of waging a “jihad” about eminent-domain abuse. (“Needed: Light, not Heat,” July 17.) That epithet should...

Alarmed by the prospect of local governments seizing homes and turning the property over to developers, lawmakers in at least half the states are rushing to blunt last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding the power of eminent domain. In Texas and California, legislators have proposed constitutional amendments to bar government from taking private property for economic development. Politicians in Alabama, South Dakota and Virginia likewise hope to curtail government's ability to condemn land. Even in states like Illinois - one of at least eight that already forbid eminent domain for economic development unless the purpose is to eliminate blight...

By KATE MORAN Day Staff Writer, New London Published on 7/19/2005 New London — However improbable their chance for success, attorneys at the Institute for Justice asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to reconsider the decision in the Kelo v. New London case that allows the city to take private property in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood to make way for a huge new development. In the three weeks since the court handed down its decision, the Institute for Justice has pressed local and state leaders to conserve the dozen houses and single apartment building the city has planned to...

‘Plans' As A Ruse To Grab Land Changes made to the 'plan' have shown how nebulous the supposed 'economic development' can be and how uncertain are the predicted benefits. By NEILD OLDHAM Published on 7/17/2005 New London's attempt to use the power of eminent domain for “economic development” has provided a textbook case for why this power should not be so used. Changes made to the “plan” have shown how nebulous the supposed “economic development” can be and how uncertain are the predicted benefits. The five justices referred to the “carefully considered development plan” in their June 23, 2005, opinion...

Coast Guard Museum Timeline Published on 7/15/2005 • July 14, 2000: Merle J. Smith, vice president of the National Coast Guard Museum Project, says during an OpSail celebration that the museum will be built in the Fort Trumbull area. • March 1, 2001: U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons introduces legislation to bring the museum to New London. The bill would have provided $10 million for construction. • June 28, 2001: The Coast Guard holds public meetings to gauge support for locating the museum either at Fort Trumbull or Riverside Park. • May 2002: The Coast Guard signs a memorandum of understanding...

KATE MORANDay Staff Writer, New LondonPublished on 7/15/2005New London — The Coast Guard's national museum is among several projects that have started to grind ahead since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that the city can raze houses on the Fort Trumbull peninsula to make way for a commercial venture that also will include a hotel, offices and housing.Momentum will likely remain slow and deliberate for the next several months, however, while members of the museum association deliberate exactly where they want the museum to go. Before it begins raising funds for construction, the museum association must settle on...

SACRAMENTO – A group of California lawmakers is trying to block the impact of last month's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that expanded the government's power to seize private property, a decision that was swiftly criticized by groups across the political spectrum. In the 5-4 decision, the nation's highest court ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses without their consent for private development. State Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Northridge, said the court ruling in Kelo v. New London allows governments to "take the house of a person that it doesn't like, and give it to a person that it...