Supreme Court Weighs Eminent Domain Case
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
February 22, 2005 8:03 a.m.
WASHINGTON (AP)–Residents trying to hang onto their homes in a working class neighborhood of New London, Conn., are waging a battle in the U.S. Supreme Court over their city government’s attempt to seize property for private economic development.
Susette Kelo and several other homeowners filed a lawsuit after city officials announced plans to bulldoze their residences to clear the way for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices. The residents refused to move, arguing it was an unconstitutional taking of their property.
The case’s outcome will have significant implications for so-called eminent domain actions.
There have been over 10,000 instances in recent years of private property being threatened with condemnation or actually condemned by government for private use, according to the Institute for Justice. The group represents the New London residents who filed the case.
The issue revolves around whether a government is serving a public purpose when it uses its power of eminent domain to take land. The Fifth Amendment prohibits taking private property for public use without just compensation. This case doesn’t involve compensation.
Over the years, the Supreme Court has deferred to the decision-making of elected state and local officials.
The court said in 1954 that it is legal for urban renewal to encompass non-blighted commercial buildings in a blighted neighborhood. In 1984, the court upheld Hawaii’s land reform law that broke the grip of large landowners, with property being taken and then resold to others.
More recently, many cities and towns have been accused of abusing their authority, razing nice homes to make way for parking lots for casinos and other tax-producing businesses.
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. City leaders say the private development will generate tax revenue and improve the local economy.
“The undisputed facts regarding the steady deterioration of New London’s economy from the 1970s onwards demonstrate the dire need for such a development project,” the city told the court.
The New London neighborhood that would 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 over 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.
Anthony Williams, who is president of the National League of Cities, says the power of eminent domain is one of the most important tools city officials have to rejuvenate their neighborhoods.
“Where would Baltimore be without the Inner Harbor, Kansas City without the Kansas Speedway, Canton, Miss., without its new Nissan plant?” Williams said.
The case is Kelo v. City of New London , 04-108.
Mixed Sympathy Over Eminent Domain
Supreme Court justices expressed sympathy yesterday with the plight of homeowners whose property may be condemned by local governments to make way for commercial development, Legal Times reports. The Connecticut case, Kelo v. City of New London , doesn’t challenge the typical “public use” power of eminent domain allowed by the Fifth Amendment, which enables cities and states to condemn property for highways, fire stations and the like, the magazine notes. Rather, New London resident Susette Kelo and others argue that power is being abused when cities take their homes for such uses as New London’s plans to complement a new Pfizer facility nearby, leasing it to private developers for $1 a year. Justice David Souter said “it bothers us a lot.” And Justice Antonin Scalia, reminding New London lawyer Wesley Horton that “you’re taking the home of someone who doesn’t want to sell,” asked: “That counts for nothing?” Mr. Horton replied yes.
The New York Times points out that with only seven justices on the bench – Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is ill and John Paul Stevens had travel problems – “it was perhaps riskier than usual to extract likely decisions from the flow of arguments.” But the paper nonetheless says that despite the expressions of sympathy, the property-rights advocates seemed likely to come away disappointed. Several justices, it reports, “said they saw no way of adopting [Ms. Kelo’s] position without overturning decades of precedents that had endorsed the use of eminent domain for slum clearance, rail lines and public utilities.”