Justice (or, Perhaps, the Lack Thereof)

Today Jenifer and I attended the arguments in a very important eminent domain case in front of the Missouri Supreme Court. This case matters because Missouri is one of the worst states in the nation for allowing cities to take one person's private property and give it away for someone else's profit, rarely, if ever, paying even remotely what the property is worth. Even if a city doesn't forcibly take title to someone's home, business, or house of worship, many people don't have the time, finances, political influence, or emotional energy to fight to save what belongs to them. Thus, they feel like they have no choice but to take what little they are offered and hope they won't have to move too far away from what was once their neighborhood.

I got really angry today at both the city's attorney and several of the judges. The city's attorney had previously (and, unfortunately, correctly) written to the court that recent legal decisions have allowed these governmental abuses of power. The attorney started off his argument by reinforcing this idea, effectively saying, "Focus only on the very limited legal notions that support my position; just ignore all those people trying to show the history of the underlying principle and real-life devastation to which it has led." And several of the judges seemed content to do just that. While the questions asked by judges in these cases can sometimes be misleading as to their ultimate disposition on a case, it appeared that more than one of the judges would rather permit injustice to continue than to rock the jurisprudential boat.

As a nation and as individual states, Americans adopted Bills of Rights in order to make sure that certain essential liberties would never be subject to restriction or elimination. Among those freedoms is the assurance that governments have no right to take away someone's property unless it is required for the construction of a road or public building. The real-life consequences when the government does take someone's property fiercely illustrates why this power must be tightly limited.

Eminent domain is rarely threatened against wealthy people or those who can fight back. Instead, the usual targets are communities composed of minorities, the poor, and/or the elderly.

In the middle of the 20th century, cities so regularly used eminent domain against black neighborhoods that the practice was commonly referred to as “Negro removal.” That offensive label eventually fell out of use, but poor, black communities continue to be condemned far more frequently than white communities. A 1989 study estimated that of 10,000 families that Baltimore displaced in the name of removing blight, fully 90 percent were African-American. Mindy Fullilove, an expert on the impact of eminent domain on minority communities, estimates that more than 1,600 black neighborhoods have been destroyed nationwide.

But then there are elderly people. In New London, Connecticut, where I helped represent homeowners in the now-infamous Kelo v. New London case, Wilhemina Dery was an 87-year old still living in her family home, in which she was born. All she wanted was to live out her final days in those beloved, familiar settings, but the United States Supreme Court held that her property could be taken from her and replaced with luxury condominiums. She eventually did get her wish, but only because she died before the city got its chance to kick her out. Our clients in Norwood, Ohio, included the Gambles, an older couple who received their condemnation notice just days after they were finally able to retire. They were uprooted from the home in which they had raised their family and built their American Dream, separated from their nearby family and friends and forced to move into a small apartment miles away. After a grueling three-year legal war, the Ohio Supreme Court vindicated their rights, but the stress drove Carl to his grave and left Joy is such delicate health that she couldn't return to the home she had sacrificed so much to save. Just today a friendly reporter in Missouri told me about an elderly couple in Rolla who simply couldn't physically deal with a move when they were threatened with eminent domain. The wife had Alzheimer's disease and the husband was terrified to complicate her dementia by moving her to an unfamiliar environment. Unmoved by their plight, the city tried to make it look like they were just holding out for more money and one councilmember said they should just move to a nursing home.

It just makes my heart hurt. Someone's home represents their stability and shelter, both in physical and emotional ways. It is the centering location in their life, the place to which they should be able to return each day and know that they have their own place in the world. These things are especially important for people who can claim ownership of very little else. And instead of protecting their rights, both courts and legislatures are content to sacrifice them in the name of "progress" or, more coarsely, so they can be replaced with a wealthier class of people.

It is not just unconstitutional -- it is unjust, immoral, and abhorrent.