Cengage Advantage Books: Foundations of the Legal Environment of Business 3rd Edition by Marianne Jennings

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Kelo v. City of New London 545 U.S. 469 (2005)
Little Pink Houses for You and Me
Facts
In 1978, the city of New London, Connecticut, undertook a redevelopment plan for the area in and around the existing park at Fort Trumbull. The plan had the goals of the ambience a state park should have, including the absence of existing pink cottages and other architecturally eclectic homes that had long been part of the area. The preface to the city's development plan included the following statement of goals and purpose:
To create a development that would complement the facility that Pfizer was planning to build, create jobs, increase tax and other revenues, encourage public access to and use of the city's waterfront, and eventually "build momentum" for the revitalization of the rest of the city, including its downtown area.
Susette Kelo and others lived in homes and pink cottages (15 total) located in and around the area for the proposed new structures that would consist of primarily private land developers and corporations. The central focus of the plan was getting Pfizer and its new research facility to the Fort Trumbull area with a resulting economic boost from a major corporate employer.
Kelo's and the others' homes would be razed to make room for Pfizer and the resulting economic development plan. They filed suit challenging New London's legal authority to take their homes. The trial court issued an injunction preventing New London from taking certain of the properties but allowing others to be taken. The appellate court found for New London on all the claims, and the landowners (petitioners) appealed.
Judicial Opinion
STEVENS, Justice
Two polar propositions are perfectly clear. On the one hand, it has long been accepted that the sovereign may not take the property of A for the sole purpose of transferring it to another private party B , even though A is paid just compensation. On the other hand, it is equally clear that a State may transfer property from one private party to another if future "use by the public" is the purpose of the taking; the condemnation of land for a railroad with common-carrier duties is a familiar example. Neither of these propositions, however, determines the disposition of this case.
The disposition of this case therefore turns on the question whether the City's development plan serves a "public purpose." Without exception, our cases have defined that concept broadly, reflecting our longstanding policy of deference to legislative judgments in this field.
Those who govern the City were not confronted with the need to remove blight in the Fort Trumbull area, but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference. The City has carefully formulated an economic development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including-but by no means limited to-new jobs and increased tax revenue. As with other exercises in urban planning and development, the City is endeavoring to coordinate a variety of commercial, residential, and recreational uses of land, with the hope that they will form a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Given the comprehensive character of the plan, the thorough deliberation that preceded its adoption, and the limited scope of our review, it is appropriate for us to resolve the challenges of the individual owners, not on a piecemeal basis, but rather in light of the entire plan. Because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment.
Petitioners contend that using eminent domain for economic development impermissibly blurs the boundary between public and private takings. We cannot say that public ownership is the sole method of promoting the public purposes of community redevelopment projects. It is further argued that without a bright-line rule nothing would stop a city from transferring citizen A 's property to citizen B for the sole reason that citizen B will put the property to a more productive use and thus pay more taxes. Such a one-to-one transfer of property, executed outside the confines of an integrated development plan, is not presented in this case. While such an unusual exercise of government power would certainly raise a suspicion that a private purpose was afoot, the hypothetical cases posited by petitioners can be confronted if and when they arise. They do not warrant the crafting of an artificial restriction on the concept of
public use.
Just as we decline to second-guess the City's considered judgments about the efficacy of its development plan, we also decline to second-guess the City's determinations as to what lands it needs to acquire in order to effectuate the project. "It is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary line nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project area. Once the question of the public purpose has been decided, the amount and character of land to be taken for the project and the need for a particular tract to complete the integrated plan rests in the discretion of the legislative branch."
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Connecticut is affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion
O'CONNOR, Justice, joined by Justices SCALIA, THOMAS, and REHNQUIST
Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded- i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public-in the process. To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings "for public use" is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property-and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Accordingly I respectfully dissent.
Where is the line between "public" and "private" property use? Even if there were a practical way to isolate the motives behind a given taking, the gesture toward a purpose test is theoretically flawed. If it is true that incidental public benefits from new private use are enough to ensure the "public purpose" in a taking, why should it matter, as far as the Fifth Amendment is concerned, what inspired the taking in the first place? And whatever the reason for a given condemnation, the effect is the same from the constitutional perspective- private property is forcibly relinquished to new private ownership.
Case Questions
1. What is the difference between this case and a case in which property is taken for a freeway?
2. What is the concern of the dissent about the decision?
3. Why does the majority state that the courts should be reluctant to get involved in eminent domain activities of local government?2