An Eminently Pro-Sprawl Decision

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Okay, you have heard about the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision that allows local governments to seize the homes and land of Americans and transfer them to new private owners. Local government just has to assert that a larger public purpose will be served. The reach of eminent domain has been extended to infinity. All that has to be done is to argue that economic development will result. Take someone’s home and transfer the land to a private developer that can build an office building, a department store, a hotel, or whatever else creates some jobs and new tax revenues. So much for the much prized property rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

What was even more incredulous about this decision was that the conservative wing of the court dissented for fear of what corporate powers could do, while the liberal wing of the court (with the help or normally conservative Justice Kennedy) sided with local government’s desire to have freedom to decimate private property rights. In other words, the conservatives were not serving corporate interests, while the liberals were doing just that, but in the name of promoting urban revitalization.

Ignored by everyone, however, is that the consequences of this decision will go far beyond urban renewal projects that are likely to impinge on lower income people. Think rampant suburban sprawl. Millions of Americans living in more rural areas are now in jeopardy. Local governments, counties not just cities, already suffering because of the high costs of supplying public infrastructure to new sprawl subdivisions will eagerly seize private property to facilitate still more sprawl development.

That family living on their prized piece of land on a country road must now worry about Wal-Mart wanting their land for yet another big box store. Or some developer or large corporation may want that land for an office development because sprawl residents crushed by traffic congestion want jobs nearer their homes. Or some developer of shopping malls will eagerly take the land. In fact, a new suburban subdivision could arguably qualify for government seizure of private land because of new tax revenues. So there goes yet another family farm.

Make no mistake; it is rural Americans who will end up paying the greatest price for this absurd court decision. Listen to what the four justices said in their dissenting opinion:

The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

These are exactly the fat cats providing money for Republicans, but who got what they want from liberals.

Listen to what Justice Thomas pointed out in his own dissent:

Something has gone seriously awry with the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not.

I never thought I would see the day when I was truly impressed by Justice Thomas, but this time he saw the irony clearly.

Every American homeowner that did not want to live in a city or a sprawl subdivision is now threatened. The sprawl industry has already proven that it knows how to corrupt local government to get favorable zoning laws and low impacts fees that cause the general public to subsidize sprawl development, and now the U.S. Supreme Court has made it even easier to cover America will still more destructive, land-cancerous sprawl. Liberals need to wake up and smell the bulldozers. No amount of urban revitalization justifies this sprawl-rape of America.

[Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of “Sprawl Kills – How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money.” He can be reached through www.sprawlkills.com.]