This article originally appeared on WND.com
Guest by post by Bob Unruh
It is simply wrong to let the government take one person’s property away in order to hand it to another private owner with more political power.’
An often-criticized precedent from the Supreme Court 20 years ago that gives local governments permission to literally confiscate a landowner’s property and give it to someone else who may have more political influence could be overturned through a new case pending before the justices.
It is the Institute for Justice that has been fighting on behalf of Bryan Bowers, a New York landowner whose property was “seized” by a local government agency.
It was then given to his competitors.
The precedent that soon could be doomed is the Kelo decision from 2005 in which the court redefined “public use.”
That’s the standard that courts must use to determine whether governments can take over private property without the owner’s consent, and it often is associated with the construction of roads and bridges and such.
In Kelo, a single-vote on the court claimed that creating jobs or increasing tax revenue was just that “public use.”
Dissenters, including a left-leaning Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that now the government “has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”
The IJ described the Kelo precedent as “one of the most reviled decisions in recent decades.”
The new case will be presented to the court in a conference in the coming days.
“State legislatures, state high courts, and American voters amending their own state constitutions have all rejected Kelo because it is simply wrong to let the government take one person’s property away in order to hand it to another private owner with more political power,” said IJ Deputy Litigation Director Bob McNamara. “This case gives the Supreme Court the opportunity to say the same.”
The case earlier was considered at the court’s Feb. 21 conference, when the justices told the New York state court to provide the record on appeal. That now has been provided.
The IJ noted, “Bowers’ case was supported by a brief from the Cato Institute and George Mason University (Scalia Law School) Professor Ilya Somin and a brief from the Buckeye Institute. Cato and Somin write about the widespread confusion Kelo created in lower courts while the Buckeye Institute shined a light on the injustices of eminent domain and frequently failed promises of redevelopment.”
The out-of-sync ruling in 2005 triggered 45 states to change their own laws to prevent what the 5-4 Kelo decision said could be done to property owners.
Bryan Bowers and his business partner Mike Licata purchased property across the street from a new hospital in Utica, New York, but then lost it when the Oneida County Industrial Development Agency took it by eminent domain and handed it over to their potential competitors to be used for parking.
The Fifth Amendment allows private property to be taken for “public use” with “just compensation” and in addition to roads, has been used for schools and other infrastructure.
Copyright 2025 WND News Center
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