Human Events - State and local governments that use eminent domain to seize private property for economic development would lose federal funding for two years under legislation passed by the House on Tuesday.
The bipartisan bill was authored through an unusual pairing of Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and passed on a voice vote.
The measure is a response to the 2005 Supreme Court ruling, /Kelo v. City of New London, which held in a 5-4 decision that economic development is considered a “public use” under the Fifth Amendment’s Taking Clause.
The decision justified the government’s condemnation of private property, in order to give it to a private business to redevelop and create a more lucrative tax base. Historically, eminent domain was legally restricted to projects for public use like road and school construction.
As a result of this ruling, the federal government’s power of eminent domain has become almost limitless, providing citizens with few means to protect their property.
Waters said the Supreme Court decision gave governments a license to “coerce individuals on behalf of society’s strongest interests.”
“The founders cannot have intended this perverse result – using economic development as a justification for using its power of eminent domain at the expense of the poor and politically weak,” Waters said.
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