Hold onto your homes, folks – the Supreme Court has spoken in Kelo v. New London. Municipalities can use eminent domain to take your house, so that they can move in some business development that generates more tax revenue.
A divided Supreme Court ruled today 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 often is at war with individual property rights.
The 5-4 ruling — assailed by dissenting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as handing “disproportionate influence and power” to the well-heeled in America — was a defeat for Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They had 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.
This was predictable. Few people honestly thought after oral arguments that the Court was leaning towards vetting the God-given rights of property owners. This is your Supreme Court, folks. We have a right to practice homosexual sodomy, but the state can take your home to build a new casino for Donald Trump. So much for our putatively “right leaning” court.
Whether this decision will have local implications in connection with the downtown Ogden Wal-mart "project" is debatable. Whereas the Kelo case didn't involve a supposedly "blighted" property, the local situation did.
What is important is that the US Supreme Court has apparently abandoned, by a narrow 5-4 margin, any pretense of adhering to the "public use" requirement set forth in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution as a prerequisite for public "takings."
Significantly, Utah remains the only state in the nation which statutorily denies the power of eminent domain to local redevelopment agencies.
Expect some fierce maneauvering during the upcoming 2006 Utah Legislative session as Utah's pro-property rights forces lock horns with the the Utah League of Towns and Cities, and their allies, the big developers and globalist box stores. If individual private property rights are now to be protected in the manner envisioned by The Founders, it will be up to the State Legislatures to ensure that.
