The decision handed down by the supreme court gives government the ability to seize private property for “economic development”.
This is outrageous.
As a result, cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue.
Opposing the decision were O’Connor, Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia.
In favor were the rest.
The whole thing started when residents in New London, Connecticut, opposed a city plan to raze their homes for a riverfront entertainment complex. City officials claimed the economic benefit to the area outweighed homeowner’s rights to keep their property.
This is sickening.
Where does it stop? Now, you can lose your home, your business, even if it’s not in a “blighted” area, even if you don’t want to sell, even if they’re tearing down an attractive middle-class neighborhood to put up a wally mart or a hotel.
And this went down totally under the radar.
I just had to get this out here. I can’t believe this wasn’t a big story. What, is some other pop star on trial this week?
Another diary on it “popped” just minutes before yours.
I was just about to post one when I saw this. I’m beyond appalled. The Supreme Court has effectively struck down the last three millennia of property rights law. Now, everything is for sale, whether you like it or not. The implications are mind-boggling.
So all that has to happen is for a local government to file eminent domain papers claiming that someone else could generate more tax revenue with your land than you can. There is nothing whatever now to keep large corporate interests from dispossessing the entire population.
Everyone who said the ruling clique was trying to take us back into the 19th century was wrong. They’re aiming for the middle ages.
Whew — I am glad you agree that this decision is sickening. I was beginning to doubt myself when I realized I was on the same side as Scalia and Thomas!! Dogs and cats sleeping together!! Madness!!
Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist, as well as O’Connor.
The end is definitely nigh if I’m thankful for the sane and reasonable voices of those justices.
Congress must act now.
You’re not the only one pinching themselves to see if they’re in some sort of dream state, I guarantee you. Of Thomas, Scalia and Rehnquist, I think I may have agreed with each of them at some points here and there, but I don’t think I’ve ever hit the trifecta like this!
This is just another reason why Dean’s 50-state all-levels strategy is important. We need to take back government from corporate interests at all levels, and pass progressive laws that protect people. This is also why just regaining Democratic dominance isn’t enough – the Democrats are just as complacent as the Republicans on this point.
absolutely we have to work all levels of government for sanity and reason. And THIS story is on the front page of everything. Comcast, yahoo, cnn, msnbc, you name it.
Ok, I didn’t look at faux, because I don’t want to start screaming. I’ve been having rage issues.
But it’s definitely not hiding. But now, it’s too late, they’ve ruled and that’s that.
Hm. I’m not sure that’s that. For starters, I think a future Supreme Court can reverse itself on this, though good luck getting one that will while Bush is in power. (I’m willing to bet that Scalia and Thomas only dissented so they’d look good to the more libertarian sorts) Also, I’m pretty sure they made this ruling based on current law – I don’t believe they’ve ruled on the constitutionality of laws prohibiting this, so State Legislatures, Congress, city councils, etc. can always theoretically pass laws to prevent this kind of thing. I think.
Well, here’s hoping.
That’s one thing about pendulums. They do swing.
That’s right–the majority opinion specifically said that the states can place greater restrictions on the eminent domain power. The case solely concerned the scope of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.
This is utter bullshit.
But maybe Americans will wake up and realize that we are all Indians now. Now maybe people will begin to understand what the Native Americans went through back in the day.
The truth is that the average American used to be very useful to the corporate classes. And so we were allowed to live on our little plots of property, allowed to believe that it was “our” land we had purchased, and that the social contract with the government (ie, the corporations) meant that only in rare instances did we have to yield our land rights.
In the earliest days of the colonies, and even the American nation, the original inhabitants of the continent – the Indians – were seen as somewhat useful, as guides, or even as allies. They had some degree of human value, a relationship value, to the colonists. Relations could be respectful, even warm. Even some of our earliest treaties with the nations, such as the Treaty of Canandaigua, were negotiated reasonably fairly on a human-to-human, nation-to-nation basis.
All that swiftly changed when mounting greed entered the equation. The plantation owners, the land speculators, the politicians started seeing through the Indians as people and saw only land, land, endless land to exploit. So they broke the treaties. (All very “legally,” of course.) They unfairly seized the land. The Indians were torn by war (some of civil war caused by our own Revolution), alcohol, disease, cultural change. They were unable to mount effective challenges to fight this.
No longer are we, the people, the citizens, useful to the corporate classes as workers and human elements. Now they have come for our land, just our land. They care about nothing else. Our honest labor, the social contract – they do not care about. It is of no use to them. They will propose to pay us a pittance or a fraction of what our homes are worth, just as they did with the Indians — and they’ll get away with it, too.
And the Supreme Court has given its official seal of approval. (Small comfort to know the decision was 5-4)
Do you get it now, America? Do you now understand what was done to the Indians? Do you now understand what is now being done to YOU?
Do you understand, also, what else the corporate interests will be willing to do to Americans, if need be? Do you understand what the policy is going to become in future years? Do you understand that the color of your skin is not going to protect you any longer?
Addenum to that: the colour of your skin, the religious symbol you wear around your neck, or the biological details of your pelvis.
Right, and today’s equivalent of beads, rum and trinkets? Why, the $5.15 per hour McJobs and the cheap Wal-Mart goods, of course.
Those dumb Indians! They sold their land for whiskey and toys!
Actually, the Indians had it even better than we did. At least some of them did — and still do — have treaties with a government which is bound by the law (the U.S. Constitution, that is). Even though the people broke that law and the Indians are suffering for it, there is some slim hope (ever slimmer — see the recent Supreme decision Sherill v. OIN — for redress under the old treaties and laws.
But the corporations are not ruled by ANY law. There is not even that safety net, for us.
the constitution was one of those quaint things, like the geneva conventions. Considering the admin and legislative are using it pretty much as toilet tissue and all. I no longer feel confident the constitution will protect me or mine.
Every since I can remember, I have been warned that the corporations would one day control the fate of our nation, they would control our government and the very essence of our lives. It has been corporations that have desecrated the Native American culture, or at least they have been the catalyst for this destruction.
Now as NYCO has so eloquently stated, everyone will subject to their fascist tyranny.
corporations got “rights” like people, we’ve been headed here. It’s ugly.
Corporations are NOT people. They can do a LOT more damage than people, and you can’t put a corporation in jail. Bullshit. It’s total bullshit.
Ut oh, here comes that rage again…
That’s a bloody brilliant turn of phrase, and hits the nail right on the head. We are all Indians now.
The final irony, of course, will be when some government lawyer cites an abrogated treaty as justification for stealing some poor slob’s land.
But I always “got it”. The purely selfish reason for treating the Other decently is that if you do not, when the Other is disposed of, your own people will turn on each other to create a new Other. Injustice isn’t just despicable, it’s stupid and self-destructive as well.
Wow.
I occasionally go over to FreeRepublic, just to see what their take on some issues is (though I can usually predict it). This makes 2 issues in one day where the majority of them agree with the majority of us (the other one being the flag burning amendment).
My head hurts.
You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din. I can’t go there. It’s too icky.
Scurrilous Corporations On The Umbrage Steal
The only way to defeat the Corporate Theft of our country is at the GrassRoots. You know, get your butts on the Planning Commissions, Parks Commissions, the City Council, County Commission, School Boards, you know those places the Right have taken over, to build their bases.
I am sorry that it is too late to save those peoples homes in Conn, but it is not to late to start taking back our government and putting a stop to the corruption that corporations have instilled within it.
Go for it. I am working on getting involved more in my local community, if my pariah status doesn’t keep me from being able to serve, you know us liberals are out to corrupt the youth of this country. lmao
We can also contact our State Representative, Senators and Governors and ask for a strengthening of State eminent domain laws.
That’ll help a lot, here in the land of “man on dog” rick santorum and arlen specter. Actually specter might be ok, he’s looking pretty reasonable these days. If sick.
This is outrageous! I just read this on Yahoo and my jaw dropped! This can’t stand! I don’t have much in this world but I had to sweat blood for my little home and the thought that my local government can just take it whenever they wish makes me furious! Especially as they are looking at building a casino nearby and a lot of us here are up in arms about that-they want to put it directly across the river from our community, a twenty house dirt road of cottages and woods. I’m sorry to ramble but this scares the hell out of me, they’ll have to take me out feet first, I can tell you that much.
best luck to you.. and I hope you don’t need it.
Nooo!! bummer!!!
bummer on two counts —
There is an eminent domain controversy going on right here in Syracuse, NY. A group called the Salina 29 is fighting to halt an eminent domain bid in favor of corporate interests who want all the land for a research park. They are not conglomerates, but instead are dairy distributors, truck stops, used auto salesmen, pipe fitters, label printers, meat packers, and believe it or not, the very company that invented the Brannock Device, that thing that measures your foot size when you go to the shoe store.
See the details here: http://www.stopocida.com.
Ironically, it is moderate Republicans who would probably care most about this case. But these local business owners could use your support. They are being threatened with eviction and inadequate remuneration for their businesses, loss of a unique geographic location vital for their businesses, etc. E-mail them and let these embattled business owners know you are appalled by this Supreme Court decision. Or, sign their petition.
The Supremes’ decision cuts another way: anything that defeats the ideology of property rights absolutism is a good thing for those of us living in an historic district. This county is dominated by a libertarian wing so extreme that it truly believes the UN wants to take over the United States by using eminent domain and zoming regulation.
This has made it extremely difficult for those of us who want our property protected from such things as casinos and big stores and golf courses to hold on to the zoning ordinance that makes that kind of development illegal in this valley. We are not wealthy, well, 95% of us are scraping our way along. The only thing that gives our property extra value is the protected viewshed.
Thanks to the examples of contempt for established law being exhibited at the very top of the political food chain in Washington DC, our county commissioners feel free to ignore such laws as those controlling the proliferation of billboards. Why, they said, should a man who just wants to make a little money off his land be prevented from erecting a superlative-sized billboard in his pasture? To hell with the cultural landscape!
It also took them nearly 9 months to comply with FEMA regulations concerning the identification of flood zones, during which hiatus the granting of mortgages ground to a halt. All because a majority of the commissioners had a phobia about feds having access to their property.
We’re back to trying to defend the common good from a politics of selfishness.
Actually, it weakens that. It means that the county can force you to sell your land, regardless of your wishes. In other words, there’s nothing you can do to prevent the county from forcing your neighbours to sell their land to Wal-Mart.
I’ve been reading some commentaries, and I don’t think it’s quite as outrageous as some have said. The government can’t just take; it has to be part of a comprehensive plan. I’m sure we’ll see a series of cases, in the next few years, that will serve to refine this decision.
where eminent domain HAS been abused to line the pockets of a developer. Even though his other “plans” have been utter failures. Even though the entire neighborhood is against a plan that will worsen traffic, pollution, and urban blight upon us.
Believe me, your historic district is fucked. Because mine was.
the rest of you have either. I trust the liberal judges more than I do the others, so I tend to believe that this is not exactly as it appears.
And others can do so here.
that’s the connecticut supreme decision. the SCOTUS one isn’t on findlaw yet. But hopefully it will be within the next couple of days. I’ll keep an eye out.
scroll down-the SCOTUS comments ARE there.
I think I need a nap.
Trust the liberal justices?
The justices are not going to be the ones making decisions to take people’s homes.
I don’t trust ANYONE on this court; not after Sherrill v. OIN — a 9-1 decision — earlier this spring. This is a court that cares absolutely nothing for precedent when it comes to property rights issues. This is a pattern they are showing, as an entire court, and it is very strange.
That’s not the only thing they’ve been ruling strangely on lately. Bush V Gore was quite odd too, in that it ordered a state to allocate its electoral votes a certain way. Eldred V Ashcroft was also odd, as they ruled that an indefinitely-extended finite term was still finite. (I really need to do my Free Culture Part III diary…)
In short, they seem to show little regard for precedent or existing law.
They have only made a decision about one case. Yes it creates precedent, but only for cases that are very close to this one.
If this had been an instance where their were a mixture of justices ending up on odd sides of the issue I would be more suspicious. But damn right I trust the liberal end of the bench more than I do justice Scalia and his mob.
Have you seen the property they are talking about. It is the next thing to blighted. This woman’s home was in a depressed and underused deserted commercial/industrial area. Read the plans the city has proposed.
I know it seems terribly unfair to the woman in question. There is no reason why the state can’t make laws that force the city to pay her a fair price for her property.
But the Court has now given people the opening. That’s why the decision is bad.
There are going to be far more unfair eminent domain cases, for far more egregious reasons, in the future now than there would have been without this ruling.
This is the highest court in the land, and they’re sending a tacit message that anything goes.
As for compensation, the notion that everything can be duly compensated with $$$ is ridiculous. Then again, this is a nation of rootless, materialistic people who see property only as a commodity to be bought and traded, not as a home. What monetary value could one possibly place
on the childhood home of an elderly person, where they may have lived all her life? (Or is that concept of “home” utterly outside the experience of young Americans today?)
We always had eminent domain — but we also always had higher community standards, where private interests did not have tacit permission from the Supreme Court to point their fingers and demand the juiciest land for their projects. This is way too close for comfort.
I’m 48 in case you were refering to me.
The court can’t rule on what might happen in the future. As the said in the last paragraph I bolded, when and if thoe events happen then they can rule. In the meantime there is NOTHING causing state legislatures from making laws that protect people. The SCOTUS on the other hand can only make decisions based on the constitution and existing law.
When I read the whole thing, thier judgement seemed sound, where as those in oposition seemed emotional, ilogical and based on what MIGHT happen.
We need a good liberal lawyer to come weigh in on this.
from the justices opposing.
this from Thomas, of all people.
have a four-for making me look up and read the entire decision, not just the excerpts I’d seen so far.
And guess who one of the proposed tenants is?
Pfizer.
Imagine that. A pharmaceutical company. How very, very odd.
That says it all.
Well of course some Freepers are going to hate the decision.
This Supreme Court decision may very well do more than anything else to get certain people on the right and certain people on the left to finally start talking TO each other in the same common language.
Republicans tend to be distrustful of government. Democrats tend to be distrustful of corporations.
What would happen if some Republicans and some Democrats realized that government and corporations are in bed together on the local level (even if Republicans refuse to see it on the national level?)
Remember that scene from Roots on the slave ship where a revolt was planned? The slave captains knew very well that the prisoners were from different tribes, different religions, and had different languages, so no one could understand each other or see they had a common enemy.
Finally, the slaves realized that in order to plan a revolt, they had to see each other not as Wolof or Mandinka, or as former or current rivals or enemies, but as being “all in the same boat,” literally chained to each other.
Remember the instructions shouted out in the darkness:
“Mandinka men! Teach your neighbor your language. Learn his.”
I truly believe that the more reasonable elements of the right are eventually going to come around. In some cases I can see it happening.
Is this one of those cases? Time will tell. Lots of weird noise out of DC these days, that’s for sure.
I really wish the majority had gone the other way and decided that “economic development” wasn’t a public use. Allowing cities to condemn property any time they want to improve the tax base is stupid and wrong.
But I do agree with the idea that eminent domain shouldn’t be limited to “blighted” areas. It shouldn’t be easier to uproot low-income neighborhoods and replace them with shopping malls than it is to condemn middle or upper income neighborhoods. After all, it’s more difficult for a low-income renter to find a new place to live than it is for a higher-income homeowner–especially if the city is determined to get rid of every place that a low-income person could afford.
In fact, now that the word is out that anyone’s home or business can be a target, maybe the state legislatures will pass some limits on the use of eminent domain. The Supreme Court’s decision wouldn’t prevent that–in fact, the majority opinion essentially invites the states to do it.
All in all, though, it’s a lousy decision. Stevens tap-danced around the concept that you’re not supposed to be able to take private person A’s property and give it to private person B.
Earlier this spring, this court came up with a bizarre decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation, Inc. which, in hindsight, should have signaled loud and clear that this court is all about validating land grabs.
In Sherrill, the court went against decades (or more) of precedent in Indian law by ruling that although the Court had previously ruled in 1985 in favor of the Oneidas’ having the right to demand settlement for theft of their lands (referring to the terms of the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua), the Oneidas could not then repurchase this lost land and keep it tax-free, under the doctrine of laches. It was the opinion of the Court (8-1) that the Oneidas had abandoned the land and “too much time had passed” for them to “return” and claim sovereign rights under the Treaty. (Never mind that the Oneidas never left the territory, had been illegally separated from their land — as the Court had ruled in 1985 — and had unsuccessfully attempted to petition the Court for almost 100 years on this matter. The Supreme Court was content to utterly ignore this fact of the matter, some of which the Court had helped to clarify in 1985.)
It seems to me that today’s decision is a logical sequel to Sherrill, in which both land grabs and “local government authority” reign supreme. Indeed, I almost would not have been surprised if the doctrine of laches lurks as a specter beneath the Court’s decision on this one too. After all, if residents of a depressed area just “let their property go” (even if they’re still physically there), well then, the private developers are welcome to move in and keep it if the local government authorities permit them.
So why did Sherrill come down as a 8-1 decision and this one as a 5-4? Easy. This one wasn’t about the red people. It was about “ordinary Americans.” Sufficient numbers of justices were horrified at this, this time, to dissent.
I’m not bringing this up to talk about Indians per se; but rather, to point out that given this earlier decision (Sherrill), the emphasis of the Court in this case is not that great of a shock.
This is not a liberal Court, not a conservative Court. This is a fucked-up Court whose decisions will, in a few decades, make the justices that handed down Dred Scott look positively enlightened by comparison.
Excellent comment, NYCO. I, too thought also of the history of specific taking of land for commercial use that had been legally delineated as belonging to the Indians of one nation or another, but I’m not versed in the court decisions and their history. However, in the past week I just happened to read an agreement made in what is now Gibson Co. TN and land plots reserved for Indians there and in Crawford Co. IL. (I had ancestors in those areas). White settlers were allowed into such lands very specifically with the reasoning that the lands had been “abandoned” by the Indians, though set aside for them. I don’t doubt that those “precedents” may have influenced some of the justice’s thinking.
And in Western Kentucky, where some of my family live now, land between Ky lake and then new Lake Barkley was seized by the government in the late 1960s – with court approval, and with the unwritten but spoken promise that the land would at least be kept in a natural state and used for recreation such as fishing, camping, etc. Well, condos are being built on some of the seized land, and resorts are started, with talk of privatization and sale of land. The former owners are furious.
So it seems there’s a sort of movement from taking of land from peoples clearly “not PLUs” (people like us – meaning white, urban, affluent, usually) that began with the original peoples, then to poorer rural types, and now into urban areas. Maybe it’s CLUs – Corporations like us.
In Missouri, they kept touting the lottery as a way to help fully fund our schools. It turns out that the lottery only funds a token amount of schools here, and I suspect the same is true elsewhere as well.
They’re doing that with slots in PA. Vastly overestimating the potential revenue.
and then it wasn’t used for that purpose – the Casinos stayed where they were.
I agree that casinos provide nothing in the long term for schools, blighted cities or peoples, or tax-burdened stated. Here in Michigan, casino income was an excuse to cut public funds to education. In Iowa, the casinos killed off many small town businesses, and then left. the Walmart effect.
And oh, the social cost of easy gambling access. Up, up, and up.
A barely noticed injustice will happen and only a handful of people will react with outrage? I guess it always has to work like that – we humans can only learn a lesson one by one.
What I really wonder is how come none of the stories about it mention that this is how Bush stole the land for his baseball stadium in Arlington. It was his proudest accomplishment before running for governor.
Thanks for the much-needed post – one of these horrible events is gonna be the last straw!
Here is a link directly to the Supreme Court opinions page. Click on Kelo vs. New London to download a 410kb PDF file.
First off, let me say that I haven’t made up my mind on this yet. Any decision that creates so much concern from both ends of the political spectrum is certainly worthy of close examination.
I do think, however, that it’s important that we consider another take on this such as Nathan Newman’s view before we declare this decision to be an odious one.
At first glance, it seems to me that deferring to the judgement of local communities in terms of exercising the power of eminient domain is both sensible and follows precedent. I don’t yet see what the Court did that was all that radical; in fact it appears to me to be a textbook case of applying the principle of federalism.
I understand that many of us are truly concerned about the homes of poor or working-class people, but this has been going on for years (we just called it “slum clearance” or “urban renewal”). I’m not saying that this means that those were good policies, but that the appropriate place to deal with these policies is at the local level, with democratically-elected state and local governments.
Considering who was representing the plaintiffs in this case, I smelled a potential trap here. I’m not saying that this alone makes the plaintiffs’ case wrong, but that what the IfJ was hoping to get was a much more restrictive notion of eminent domain that is consistent with the right-wing playbook of paring away the (legitimate) powers of government.
Admittedly, I do have to look closer at the details of the case, so don’t all jump on me yet.