An often-criticized precedent from the Supreme Court 20 years ago that gives local governments permission to literally confiscate a landowner’s property and give it to someone else who may have more political influence could be overturned through a new case pending before the justices.
It is the Institute for Justice that has been fighting on behalf of Bryan Bowers, a New York landowner whose property was “seized” by a local government agency.
It was then given to his competitors.
The precedent that soon could be doomed is the Kelo decision from 2005 in which the court redefined “public use.”
That’s the standard that courts must use to determine whether governments can take over private property without the owner’s consent, and it often is associated with the construction of roads and bridges and such.
In Kelo, a single-vote on the court claimed that creating jobs or increasing tax revenue was just that “public use.”
Dissenters, including a left-leaning Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that now the government “has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more.”
The IJ described the Kelo precedent as “one of the most reviled decisions in recent decades.”
Hellbound and Down 