‘Wildly off-base’: New push for Supreme Court to reverse case that allows property confiscation

The U.S. Supreme Court bizarrely ruled in 2005, in the Kelo case, that a government could take privately owned property from one owner to give it to another, just, well, just because.

That original ruling came down to dollars and cents, when the city of New London, New York, used eminent domain to confiscate a home belonging to Susan Kelo to give it to Pfizer for one of its business operations.

She sued, but the Supreme Court said a procedure to use eminent domain “to transfer land from private owner to another private owner” did not violate the Constitution.

Actually, the authority vested in eminent domain would be for purposes of taking property to build a highway, or some similar public benefit.

That New London scheme actually failed, as the company was unable to obtain financing for its plans, and the site remained an undeveloped empty lot.

The move already has prompted 47 states to strengthen their own eminent domain laws, and now it’s time for the national precedent to be reversed, according to constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, who not only has testified before Congress as an expert on the Constitution, but has represented members in court.

He said that one case, Kelo, “has long stood out for me as wildly off-base and wrongly decided.”

He explained, “There is now a petition before the Supreme Court that would allow it to reconsider this pernicious precedent. The court should grant review in Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency precisely for that purpose,” he explained.

“Many of us expressed outrage at the actions of the city leaders of New London, Connecticut, when they used eminent domain to seize the property of citizens against their will to give it to the Pfizer corporation,” he said. “This anger grew with the inexplicable decision of the Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London to uphold the abusive action. After all the pain that the city caused its own residents and the $80 million it spent to buy and bulldoze the property, it came to nothing. Pfizer later announced that it was closing the facility — leaving the city worse off than when it began.”

He said the new case involves New York developer Bryan Bowers who challenged the decision of a county redevelopment agency to condemn his property and then give it to another developer to use as a private parking lot.

Turley noted that Justice Chase, shortly after the Bill of Rights was written, explained the injustice.

“An act of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority … . A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean… . [A] law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it.” Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798).

Turley explained much has changed on the Supreme Court since its 2005 ruling and “It is possible that the new majority could finally correct the mistake made in Kelo.”

He said, “This abusive use of eminent domain is not just an invitation for corrupt dealings but a denial of the core protections of individual citizens under our Constitution.”