Supreme Court Rules Against Rights Of Homeowners

A narrowly divided ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday gave power to city and county governments allowing them to seize people’s homes and private property so that developers can build shopping malls and other businesses. The ruling gives local governments much broader power to take property from citizens in order to generate tax revenues. Although legal analysts and experts have said they don’t believe governments will abuse their power, Thursday’s ruling incited fear and anger in many Americans, including Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who voted against the ruling. In her dissent, O’Connor said she believes the ruling favors the rich and powerful at the expense of middle-class Americans.

The ruling stems from a heated debate involving a group of homeowners in New London, Connecticut, a city that has suffered similar economic struggles as those afflicting many urban areas in the United States, including lost jobs and dwindling populations. City officials have designed a commercial development to be built on the Thames riverfront, including offices as well as a riverfront hotel, health club, restaurants and stores that would attract tourists to the riverfront. The complex would adjoin the Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum. But when the city came knocking on the door of homeowners who live in the area of the proposed development, they had the doors slammed in their faces. The city was claiming that it had the right, under the Fifth Amendment, to seize the property and give homeowners "just compensation" for their property, but the homeowners didn’t see it that way, and they filed a lawsuit to save their homes, some of which had been occupied by several generations of the same family. The Institute for Justice, a Washington public interest law firm, represented the New London homeowners in the suit. Upon hearing that the Supreme Court had ruled against them, the plaintiffs were dumbfounded. Connecticut resident Susette Kelo and the other participants in the lawsuit have said that they will continue their fight despite the high court’s ruling. "It's a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would keep fighting the bulldozers in his working-class neighborhood. "I won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word."

Connecticut state Rep. Ernest Hewett was one of the city council members who approved the development. "I am charged with doing what’s best for the 26,000 people that live in New London," Hewett said. "That, to me, was enacting the eiminent domain process designed to revitalize a city with nowhere to go." The National League of Cities agreed with Hewett and the developers, arguing that the eminent domain power of cities is critical to encouraging urban renewal with development projects such as Kansas City’s Kansas Speedway and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, said that under the Fifth Amendment, the city of New London has the right to pursue private development if such development is for public use, since the project the city wants to develop is designed to bring in more jobs and revenue. "Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government," Stevens wrote. He went on to say that local officials are in a better position than federal judges to decide what's best for a local community. He was joined in his opinion by other members of the court's liberal wing—Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy. Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer have typically favored giving more power to local governments and cities, which historically have used the Fifth Amendment for seizing private properties and using them for urban renewal projects.

More than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned by local governments in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice. At least eight states—Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, South Carolina and Washington—have laws that specifically forbid the use of invoking powers of eminent domain for economic development, unless it is done to eliminate blight. Other states either expressly allow such seizures, or they have not specifically addressed the issue. In her scathing dissent, O’Connor criticized the four assenting judges for abandoning the conservative principles of individual property owners’ rights and instead giving "disproportionate influence and power" to the wealthy and powerful. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," O'Connor wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to "just compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth Amendment. But no matter how local governments arrive at a figure of "just compensation," there is no price that can be put on generations of family history, memories, and nostalgia created in the houses that Americans call home.