Takings/Eminent Domain Flashcards
The Seven Dwarves each own a small, well-maintained cottage in the same small waterfront neighborhood of City. City, which is economically depressed (but not “blighted” in the sense of having slums), enacts a redevelopment scheme under which private developers will be sold waterfront acreage on which the developers will demolish existing structures and build luxury houses and offices for high-tech businesses. The City legislature rationally believes that the redevelopment plan will create many new jobs, and greater economic prosperity, in the neighborhood. City therefore proposes to seize the seven Dwarf-owned cottages under its eminent domain power, pay fair market value for them, and turn them over to a private developer, Snow White, who will redevelop the properties as per the redevelopment plan. The Dwarves sue the city for an injunction against the taking , arguing that the Fifth Amendment (as applied to a state under the Fourteenth Amendment ) authorizes only takings for the “public good,” and that seizing well-maintained properties and turning them over to a private developer is not a taking for a public good. As a matter of federal constitutional law, will the Dwarves succeed in obtaining the injunction?
No. The fact pattern is on nearly all fours with the controversial case of Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005). In Kelo, the Supreme Court held, by 5-4, that a taking of property satisfies the “public good” requirement as long as the taking bears a rational relation to achieving a legitimate public purpose. The Kelo majority also held that a redevelopment plan that the legislature reasonably expects to create extra jobs and to increase economic activity (as well as property-tax revenues) bears the required rational relation to achieving a legitimate public purpose. And that’s true even where the property taken is not “blighted.” So here, since the facts are so comparable to those in Kelo, the Dwarves will not be able to successfully claim that the “public good” is not being advanced, and that the taking therefore violates the Fifth Amendment of the federal constitution.
NOTE: Kelo was a decision about the meaning of the federal “takings” clause. A state’s courts or legislature are always free to interpret the state’s own state-constitutional takings clause (if it has one) so that the clause bans some takings that would satisfy the federal constitutional clause. And, indeed, a number of states have done so. So it’s possible that the Dwarves might be able to convince a court that the state takings clause bars the taking of non-blighted property for purposes of private redevelopment.
