A public interest lawyer whose firm represented homeowners in a controversial case regarding eminent domain 10 years ago told lawmakers that the U.S. Supreme Court has left private property owners with “very little protection” if a city wants to take their residences for developmental purposes.
Dan Alban, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a firm that represents people whose rights, the outfit determines, are being violated by the government, appeared before the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution to say what he characterized as the “infamous” Kelo v. City of New London case can be used to “transfer perfectly fine private property to a private developer based simply on the mere promise of increased tax revenue.”
The court, Alban said, determined that it is “acceptable to use the power of eminent domain when there is a mere possibility that something else could make more money than the homes or small businesses that currently occupy the land.”
In her dissent in Kelo, Alban noted, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, “The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping center, or any farm with a factory.”
“Eminent domain sounds like an abstract issue but it affects real people,” Alban told the panel. “Real people lose the homes they love and watch as they are replaced with luxury condominiums. Real people lose the businesses they count on to put food on the table and watch as they are replaced with shopping malls. And all this happens because local governments prefer the taxes generated by condos and malls to modest homes and small businesses.”
Federal law currently allows expending federal funds to support condemnations for the benefit of private developers. By doing so, Alban said, the government “encourages this abuse.”
“Using eminent domain so that another richer, better-connected person may live or work on the land you used to own tells Americans that their hopes, dreams and hard work do not matter as much as money and political influence,” Alban said. “The use of eminent domain for private development has no place in a country built on traditions of independence, hard work and the protection of property rights.”
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