Eminent Domain: Not a Single Citizen is Safe
By Amber Hall, 12th grade
*2006 Role Models Today Writing Contest Winner*
June 16, 2006

Thomas Jefferson once said, “Experience hath shown that, even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with powers have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”  Eminent domain is the perfect example of the government’s desire to replace democracy with dictatorship, and to call it progress.  When eminent domain becomes absolute rule, as was the Supreme Court ruling on the subject in 2005, not a single citizen is safe from governmental greed.  Eminent domain abuse is one of the most important issues facing the nation in the news today.

According to a 2005 Supreme Court ruling (5-4), government now has the right to force an individual from his or her home in order to make way for profit in endeavors such as malls, sewage treatment plants, landfills, parking garages, and corporations that bring in more tax revenue for the government and cities.  Until now, eminent domain was used only for the benefit of a community; for building roads, hospitals, airports, or libraries.

Eminent domain has been around forever.  Taking private property against its owner’s wishes, with no recourse, helped lead to the American Revolution.  After winning independence, our young country limited peacetime eminent domain powers, denying the federal government the power to build roads, which resulted in the writing of the Fifth Amendment.  It requires that just compensation be paid when land is taken for public use.  Over the years the term “public use” has been misinterpreted to further agendas.  Basically, a person’s home, business, farm, or church, is no longer that person’s castle.  The Supreme Court decided such property is just on loan to the individual.

The 2005 ruling opens the door for sophisticated corporations to dangle economic carrots in front of municipality leaders experiencing fiscal crisis, which threatens small businesses, the critical stakeholders of local communities, in turn.  Proponents of eminent domain do not see it as an inhumane or irresponsible practice.  For example, the National League of Cities supports the use of eminent domain, calling it a “necessary tool of urban development.”  Other proponents of the ruling believe the practice is necessary to get rid of decay and to provide safe-low income housing.  Opponents charge that the Supreme Court ruling violates the Constitution and strips property owners of the right to defend their property against a government takeover.  Property will be taken even if the owner refuses.  Courts give deference to local ordinances that deem the property unusable or blighted, making it impossible to disapprove such a claim.

The erosion of the doctrine of eminent domain has had appalling results.  To illustrate, in 1998, at Mesa’s Site 17 in Arizona, two dozen homes were condemned.  As of 2002, the land was setting empty because the developer had not been able to get financing for the project.  In 1981, Detroit destroyed Poletown, the last racially integrated neighborhood, through use of eminent domain.  The city gave the area to General Motors on which to build a plant, but the plant did not live up to its promise of economic prosperity to the city.  In Willets Point, Queens, basic services, such as paved streets and sewers, are scarce, and now the city wants to build a new ballpark for the Mets.  In Lakewood, Ohio, the city declared a neighborhood blighted because the homes there lacked two car garages and two full baths.  Why?  Developers wanted to build a large scale hotel.  New Orleans will become the center of eminent domain abuse here shortly.  The land used in areas most affected by the hurricane presents a situation that is ripe for the taking under the guise of economic development.  Cities often want to redevelop areas with the low property values because minorities have less political clout and are less able to fight back.  Some displaced hurricane victims will never get to go home.

It is outrageous that we have to enact legislation to protect our personal property from the very government that is supposed to represent the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”  A governing body’s opinion of what might benefit citizens is not an adequate criterion for a question that could cost people their homes.  Eminent domain must return to its original intent: to help the people retain homes that they worked their fingers to the bone to buy in the first place.  The 2005 eminent domain ruling is a red flag.  It reminds us that we need to have the courage and will to defend our core principles and values.

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