Kelo
v. City of
_____
http://laws.findlaw.com/US/000/04-108.html
Vote: 5 (Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, Souter,
Stevens)
4 (O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas)
Opinion
of the Court: Stevens
Concurring
opinion: Kennedy
Dissenting
opinions: O’Connor, Thomas
For
decades the city of
The
NLDC developed a master plan for the area surrounding the proposed Pfizer
operation. This plan called for a hotel, conference center, museum,
restaurants, shops, office space, marina, river walk, and new residential
housing. In 2000 the city adopted the development plan. To begin the
development, the city had to acquire approximately 115 privately owned parcels
of land. The city successfully negotiated the purchase of most of this land,
but some landowners refused to sell. The city responded by condemning their
properties through the use of eminent domain.
Nine landowners filed suit, claiming the city’s actions
violated the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. Among them were Susette Kelo, who had owned a waterview home since 1997, and Wilhelmina Dery, who had lived in her
justice stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Two
polar propositions are perfectly clear. On the one hand, it has long been
accepted that the sovereign may not take the property of A for the sole purpose of transferring it to another private party B, even though A is paid just compensation. On the other hand, it is equally clear
that a State may transfer property from one private party to another if future
“use by the public” is the purpose of the taking; the condemnation of land for
a railroad with common-carrier duties is a familiar example. Neither of these
propositions, however, determines the disposition of this case.
As
for the first proposition, the City would no doubt be forbidden from taking
petitioners’ land for the purpose of conferring a private benefit on a
particular private party…. Nor would the City be allowed to take property under
the mere pretext of a public purpose, when its actual purpose was to bestow a
private benefit. The takings before us, however, would be executed pursuant to
a “carefully considered” development plan. The trial judge and all the members
of the Supreme Court of Connecticut agreed that there was no evidence of an
illegitimate purpose in this case. Therefore, as was true of the statute challenged
in [
On
the other hand, this is not a case in which the City is planning to open the
condemned land--at least not in its entirety--to use by the general public. Nor
will the private lessees of the land in any sense be required to operate like
common carriers, making their services available to all comers. But although
such a projected use would be sufficient to satisfy the public use requirement,
this “Court long ago rejected any literal requirement that condemned property
be put into use for the general public.” [Midkiff.] Indeed, while many state courts in the mid-19th century
endorsed “use by the public” as the proper definition of public use, that
narrow view steadily eroded over time. Not only was the “use by the public”
test difficult to administer (e.g.,
what proportion of the public need have access to the property? at what
price?), but it proved to be impractical given the diverse and always evolving
needs of society….
The disposition of this case therefore turns on the question
whether the City’s development plan serves a “public purpose.” Without
exception, our cases have defined that concept broadly, reflecting our
longstanding policy of deference to legislative judgments in this field.
In
Berman v. Parker (1954), this Court upheld a redevelopment plan targeting a
blighted area of
In
Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff (1984),
the Court considered a
… For more than a century, our public use jurisprudence has
wisely eschewed rigid formulas and intrusive scrutiny in favor of affording
legislatures broad latitude in determining what public needs justify the use of
the takings power.
Those
who govern the City were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the
To avoid this result, petitioners urge us to adopt a new
bright-line rule that economic development does not qualify as a public use.
Putting aside the unpersuasive suggestion that the City’s plan will provide
only purely economic benefits, neither precedent nor logic supports
petitioners’ proposal. Promoting economic development is a traditional and long
accepted function of government. There is, moreover, no principled way of
distinguishing economic development from the other public purposes that we have
recognized…. Clearly, there is no basis for exempting economic development from
our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose.
Petitioners contend that using eminent domain for economic
development impermissibly blurs the boundary between public and private
takings. Again, our cases foreclose this objection. Quite simply, the
government’s pursuit of a public purpose will often benefit individual private
parties…. We cannot say that public ownership is the sole method of promoting
the public purposes of community redevelopment projects.”
It
is further argued that without a bright-line rule nothing would stop a city
from transferring citizen A’s
property to citizen B for the sole
reason that citizen B will put the
property to a more productive use and thus pay more taxes. Such a one-to-one
transfer of property, executed outside the confines of an integrated development
plan, is not presented in this case. While such an unusual exercise of
government power would certainly raise a suspicion that a private purpose was
afoot, the hypothetical cases
posited by petitioners can be confronted if and when they arise. They do not warrant the crafting of an
artificial restriction on the concept of public use….
Just
as we decline to second-guess the City’s considered judgments about the
efficacy of its development plan, we also decline to second-guess the City’s
determinations as to what lands it needs to acquire in order to effectuate the
project. “It is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary line
nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project area. Once the
question of the public purpose has been decided, the amount and character of
land to be taken for the project and the need for a particular tract to
complete the integrated plan rests in the discretion of the legislative
branch.”
In
affirming the City’s authority to take petitioners’ properties, we do not
minimize the hardship that condemnations may entail, notwithstanding the
payment of just compensation. We
emphasize that nothing in our opinion precludes any State from placing further
restrictions on its exercise of the takings power. Indeed, many States already
impose “public use” requirements that are stricter than the federal baseline.
Some of these requirements have been established as a matter of state
constitutional law, while others are
expressed in state eminent domain statutes that carefully limit the grounds
upon which takings may be exercised. As the submissions of the parties and
their amici make clear, the necessity and wisdom of
using eminent domain to promote economic development are certainly matters of
legitimate public debate. This
Court’s authority, however, extends only to determining whether the City’s
proposed condemnations are for a “public use” within the meaning of the Fifth
Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Because over a century of our case law
interpreting that provision dictates an affirmative answer to that question, we
may not grant petitioners the relief that they seek.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Connecticut is
affirmed.
It
is so ordered.
justice
kennedy, concurring.
I join the opinion for the Court and add these further
observations.
This
Court has declared that a taking should be upheld as consistent with the Public
Use Clause as long as it is “rationally related to a conceivable public
purpose.”
A
court applying rational-basis review under the Public Use Clause should strike
down a taking that, by a clear showing, is intended to favor a particular
private party, with only incidental or pretextual
public benefits….
This
is not the occasion for conjecture as to what sort of cases might justify a
more demanding standard, but it is appropriate to underscore aspects of the
instant case that convince me no departure from Berman and Midkiff is appropriate here. This taking
occurred in the context of a comprehensive development plan meant to address a
serious city-wide depression, and the projected economic benefits of the
project cannot be characterized as de minimus. The identity of most of the
private beneficiaries were unknown at the time the city formulated its
plans. The city complied with elaborate procedural requirements that facilitate
review of the record and inquiry into the city’s purposes. In sum, while there
may be categories of cases in which the transfers are so suspicious, or the
procedures employed so prone to abuse, or the purported benefits are so trivial
or implausible, that courts should presume an impermissible private purpose, no
such circumstances are present in this case....
justice o’connor, with whom the chief justice, justice scalia, and justice thomas join, dissenting.
Over two centuries ago, just after the Bill of Rights was
ratified, Justice Chase wrote:
“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 (1798).
Today
the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power. Under
the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to
being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be
upgraded-- i.e., given to an owner
who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the
public--in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental
public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property
render economic development takings “for public use” is to wash out any
distinction between private and public use of property--and thereby effectively
to delete the words “for public use” from the Takings Clause of the Fifth
Amendment. Accordingly I respectfully dissent….
This
case returns us for the first time in over 20 years to the hard question of
when a purportedly “public purpose” taking meets the public use requirement. It
presents an issue of first impression: Are economic development takings
constitutional? I would hold that they are not. We are guided by two precedents
about the taking of real property by eminent domain. In Berman, we upheld takings within a blighted neighborhood of
In
Midkiff, we
upheld a land condemnation scheme in
The
Court’s holdings in Berman and Midkiff were true to the principle underlying
the Public Use Clause. In both those cases, the extraordinary, precondemnation use of the targeted property inflicted
affirmative harm on society--in Berman through
blight resulting from extreme poverty and in Midkiff through oligopoly resulting from extreme wealth. And in both
cases, the relevant legislative body had found that eliminating the existing
property use was necessary to remedy the harm. Thus a public purpose was
realized when the harmful use was eliminated. Because each taking directly achieved a public benefit, it
did not matter that the property was turned over to private use. Here, in
contrast,
In
moving away from our decisions sanctioning the condemnation of harmful property
use, the Court today significantly expands the meaning of public use. It holds
that the sovereign may take private property currently put to ordinary private
use, and give it over for new, ordinary private use, so long as the new use is
predicted to generate some secondary benefit for the public--such as increased
tax revenue, more jobs, maybe even aesthetic pleasure. But nearly any lawful
use of real private property can be said to generate some incidental benefit to
the public. Thus, if predicted (or even guaranteed) positive side-effects are
enough to render transfer from one private party to
another constitutional, then the words “for public use” do not realistically
exclude any takings, and thus do not
exert any constraint on the eminent domain power….
Finally, … the Court suggests that
property owners should turn to the States, who may or may not choose to impose
appropriate limits on economic development takings. This is an abdication of
our responsibility. States play many important functions in our system of dual
sovereignty, but compensating for our refusal to enforce properly the Federal
Constitution (and a provision meant to curtail state action, no less) is not
among them….
Any
property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the
fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to
be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political
process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the
victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with
fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this
perverse result.
justice thomas, dissenting.
…
Today’s decision is simply the latest in a string of our cases construing the
Public Use Clause to be a virtual nullity, without the slightest nod to its
original meaning. In my view, the Public Use Clause, originally understood, is
a meaningful limit on the government’s eminent domain power….
… I would revisit our Public Use Clause cases and consider
returning to the original meaning of the Public Use Clause: that the government
may take property only if it actually uses or gives the public a legal right to
use the property.
The consequences of today’s decision are
not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful. So-called “urban renewal”
programs provide some compensation for the properties they take, but no
compensation is possible for the subjective value of these lands to the
individuals displaced and the indignity inflicted by uprooting them from their
homes. Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is
bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any
economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall
disproportionately on poor communities. Those communities are not only
systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social
use, but are also the least politically powerful. If ever there were
justification for intrusive judicial review of constitutional provisions that
protect “discrete and insular minorities,” United
States v. Carolene Products Co. (1938), surely that
principle would apply with great force to the powerless groups and individuals
the Public Use Clause protects. The deferential standard this Court has adopted
for the Public Use Clause is therefore deeply perverse. It encourages “those
citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process,
including large corporations and development firms” to victimize the weak.
(O’Connor, J., dissenting)….
The
Court relies almost exclusively on this Court’s prior cases to derive today’s
far-reaching, and dangerous, result. But the principles this Court should
employ to dispose of this case are found in the Public Use Clause itself…. When
faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases
wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document,
we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution’s
original meaning. For the reasons I have given, and for the reasons given in
Justice O’Connor’s dissent, the conflict of principle raised by this boundless
use of the eminent domain power should be resolved in petitioners’ favor. I
would reverse the judgment of the Connecticut Supreme Court.