[Vision2020] Supreme Court on eminent domain

[Mark Solomon]

This is so scary I can't believe it. I urge anyone concerned locally 
to get serious about participating in the City and County P&Z's and 
the Latah Economic Development Committee as the likely places where 
such a now-sanctioned abuse of governmental power would originate.

Mark Solomon
*******
June 23, 2005

Justices Refuse to Increase Land-Use Oversight

  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


WASHINGTON (AP) -- 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.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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