Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Your home could be up for grabs

A newly empowered blessing from the Supreme Court to seize private property in the interest of economic development may come in quite handy in the competitive business recruitment wars.

By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published June 24, 2005

If you own your home, pay the taxes and keep the property in decent shape, it really is yours. Right?

Despite the increasingly quaint notion that your home is your castle, the answer is often "No."

On Thursday, homeowners Susette Kelo, Wilhelmina Dery, Michael Cristofaro and others in a working-class neighborhood in New London, an old Connecticut whaling town eager to build a biotech hub, learned this lesson the hard way.

In a case that further shifts control of private property into the hands of local communities, a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Kelo vs. New London that local governments can seize and bulldoze people's homes and businesses against their will, all in the name of private economic development.

Especially in the name of biotech, the hot "It" industry of the new millennium.

What's new is the Supreme Court's willingness to broaden the reasons why private property can be seized. Past court rulings had allowed cities to seize property, but only for projects with a clear "public use," such as building roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

Thursday's court ruling widened the definition of "public use" in the Fifth Amendment to embrace economic development projects aimed at attracting jobs to a community.

"I am very disappointed that the court sided with powerful government and business interests," Kelo said in a statement. "But I will continue to fight to save my home and to preserve the Constitution."

The Supreme Court ruling is disturbing. But not surprising.

It reinforces a legal trend that governments vulnerable to influential developers can meet lower and lower standards to justify actions against the property of individuals. If this Supreme Court ruling is widely endorsed, what will protect the owner of any private property that happens to stand in the way of, or interfere with, a "must have" economic development project?

It's not like the ruling comes out of the blue. As metropolitan areas add more people and compete for 21st century jobs, land becomes more precious for development.

And legal rules, including those intended to protect individual rights, tend to bend to accommodate government and powerful corporate interests. The changes are incremental, which makes them easier to sell to (or slip by) the public.

Critics of the high court ruling argued local governments could now seize, or use the power of "eminent domain" to take, any homes, just so that businesses could make more money off that land and generate more tax revenue.

The ruling certainly sends a message, in spirit if not yet in legal terms, to business-friendly and expansion-minded Florida. The state has assembled an aggressive network of economic development groups, from the local to the statewide level, that seeks to employ every available incentive, tax advantage, subsidy, grant, marketing tool and legal tool to attract companies and retain those here.

A newly empowered blessing from the Supreme Court to seize private property in the interest of economic development may come in quite handy in the competitive business recruitment wars.

Thursday's 5-4 ruling reflected sharp differences and some strange bedfellows on the high court.

The liberal-leaning justices supported property seizure as a community benefit. The more conservative justices argued it was a power play against individual rights.

Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said if property seizure is a concern, state laws should deal with it. Dissenting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor painted the ruling as a blow for the little guy and a sop to wealthy developers.

"The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms," she wrote.

In depressed New London, Kelo in 1997 bought and restored a pink house where the Thames River meets Long Island Sound. The Dery family has lived down the street since 1895. Cristofaro's family has owned property there for more than 30 years. The neighborhood is on an abandoned submarine base called Fort Trumbull.

Things changed in 1998. After pharmaceutical giant Pfizer committed a global research center next to Fort Trumbull, the city decided the area could be put to better use.

New London, a dwindling town of less than 26,000, then handed over its power to seize private property for public use to a nonprofit organization called the New London Development Corp.

In turn, that group chose developer Corcoran Jennison to bulldoze the homes to clear the way for a planned riverfront hotel, health club and offices adjacent to the Pfizer facility.

Connecticut officials praised the Supreme Court ruling, calling it a boost for development in New London. The struggling city's latest blow came last month when the Pentagon said it plans to close the U.S. Naval Submarine Base, one of the city's largest employers.

Kelo, a registered nurse, and several neighbors sued the city five years ago. Powerful groups, from the AARP and NAACP to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, backed Kelo.

But last year, the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed with New London, ruling 4-3 that the mere promise of more tax revenue justified the condemnation of the neighborhood homes. The ruling was appealed.

Thursday's 5-4 Supreme Court ruling affirmed last year's state court ruling.

"With today's ruling, the poor and middle class will be most vulnerable to eminent domain abuse by government and its corporate allies," said Kelo's attorney, Scott Bullock of the nonprofit Institute for Justice in Washington.

"The 5-4 split and the nearly equal division among state supreme courts shows just how divided the courts really are. This will not be the last word."

State laws differ on property seizure. But this much is certain: In fast-growing, development-crazed Florida, the pace of seizures of private property for planned communities, shopping centers, office complexes and - yes - biotech hubs like the proposed Scripps Research campus in Palm Beach County is inevitable.

Who knows? Densely packed Pinellas County, where undeveloped land is a rare commodity, may find itself the eminent domain capital of the state.

Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or 727 893-8405.

[Last modified June 24, 2005, 00:46:17]