Supreme Court Can Protect Property Owners From Eminent Domain Abuse
Bryan Bowers and his business partner, Mike Licata, planned to build medical office space across from a new hospital in downtown Utica, New York. The Oneida County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA) nixed that plan by agreeing to take the property so a competing business next door could use it for a parking lot—a land grab that a state appeals court approved last February.
The U.S. Supreme Court invited such abuses with its 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, which blessed the use of eminent domain to promote economic development by transferring property from one private owner to another. Bowers’ case offers the justices another chance to revisit that widely criticized decision, which endangered property rights by letting government officials reassign them to politically favored businesses.
The Institute for Justice, which represents Bowers, is asking the Supreme Court to clarify the limits of that license. Alternatively, it says, the Court should overturn Kelo, which was “wrong the day it was decided.”
The Fifth Amendment imposes two restrictions on government takings of private property: They must be accompanied by “just compensation,” and they must be for “public use.” But in New York, the state appeals court noted, “what qualifies as a public purpose or public use is broadly defined as encompassing virtually any project that may confer upon the public a benefit, utility, or advantage.”
In this case, the court said, “the acquisition of the property will serve the public use of mitigating parking and traffic congestion.” That sort of reasoning, Bowers argues, is suspect even under Kelo.
Writing for the majority in Kelo, Justice John Paul Stevens emphasized that the condemnation of homes in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London, Connecticut, was based on “a ‘carefully considered’ development plan” that supposedly would “create in excess of 1,000 jobs,” “increase tax and other revenues,” and “revitalize an economically distressed city” (none of which actually happened). In Bowers’ case, by contrast, OCIDA was not implementing a “development plan”; it was simply
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