I’ve never agreed that eminent domain should be used simply because there is financial incentive to do so.  In the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex recently, an example of this was Arlington’s use of eminent domain to wipe out an entire neighborhood to make room for the new Dallas Cowboys football stadium.  Yes, that’s right: the government kicked people out of their homes so they could build a sports arena for a professional team that makes millions of dollars and seriously overpays its athletes.

Tell me again why the government is taking homes away from citizens for a sports team?  Tax revenue?  Economic development?  Not good enough, I say.  That is an abuse of eminent domain in my opinion.  Thankfully, cases like this are springing up all around the country, and courts are ruling that such use does in fact constitute an abuse of power by governments.

Here’s a great example from Ohio:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that economic development isn’t a sufficient reason under the state constitution to justify taking homes, putting a halt to a $125 million project of offices, shops and restaurants in a Cincinnati suburb that officials said would create jobs and add tax revenue.

[…]

“For the individual property owner, the appropriation is not simply the seizure of a house,” Justice Maureen O’Connor wrote in a case that pitted the city of Norwood against two couples trying to save their homes. “It is the taking of a home — the place where ancestors toiled, where families were raised, where memories were made.”

Precisely!  And the court gets it!  How refreshing.

The greater tragedy is that the “U.S. Supreme Court last summer allowed municipalities to seize homes for use by a private developer.”  It was a terrible blow to citizens’ property rights across the country, but things are changing.

Dana Berliner, an attorney for the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice that represented property owners in the case, said Wednesday’s decision will have ramifications in high courts and legislatures across the country.

“This case is really part of a trend throughout the country of states responding to and rejecting the U.S. Supreme Court’s Kelo decision last year,” she said. “There are now 28 states that have taken legislative steps to protect owners more after that decision, and this case is the next movement in that trend, and I believe now not only legislatures but other courts are going to begin rejecting that terrible decision.”

Despite the SCOTUS’ poor judgment in the Kelo case, state bodies are moving to intercept and disable it in order to protect families from losing their homes in the name of economic progress.  Again, the recent Arlington event is a perfect example as many people were upset about losing their homes, and that neighborhood was in no way deteriorating.  It was quiet, peaceful, well-established, long-lived, and wholly abused by government power in caving to the special interests of a professional sports team that was unable to get it via respectable and legitimate means.  In fact, that instance was a case of the team and government choosing a neighborhood to destroy simply because it would allow them to place the new stadium near the Texas Rangers baseball stadium.  Pathetic.

“This was a perfect example of what is going on all over the country: a perfectly nice, working class neighborhood with no tax delinquencies, no falling down buildings, a nice neighborhood of homes and businesses, that a developer thought could be much more profitable as an upscale shopping and high-end housing center,” she said.

And that’s the point.  Legislatures and courts need to curb such abuses of this governmental power.  Let’s hope the trend continues.