Update 3: Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes

Subject: Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
Date: 6/23/2005 11:43:56 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
From: kitchen@hellskitchen.net
Sent from the Internet (Details)


Associated Press
Update 3: Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
06.23.2005, 10:51 AM

Opinion at http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/04pdf/04-108.pdf

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.

The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.