WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court gave cities broad power Thursday to bulldoze homes and small stores to make way for business development, a ruling the dissenters said put shopkeepers and homeowners at the mercy of revenue-hungry governments.
The 5-4 ruling against a small group of residents in New London, Conn., goes further than ever before in allowing government to invoke its power of "eminent domain" to seize private property from unwilling sellers.
The ruling is likely to encourage more city-backed plans to clear land for office complexes or big-box retailers, land-use experts said. It also would help cities that seek to redevelop but are strapped for tax money to pay for it, they said. Now local governments can turn to developers to finance the projects, more confident that courts will not stand in the way.
The Supreme Court dissenters accused the majority of sacrificing the rights of ordinary homeowners to please well-connected developers.
"Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall or any farm with a factory."
The ruling's effect in California probably will be blunted by protective state laws, although lawyers and redevelopment officials disagreed about that Thursday.
Under California law, a redevelopment agency may condemn property only in a "blighted area." At least eight other states -- Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, South Carolina and Washington -- have put similar restrictions on city redevelopment agencies.
The high court noted Thursday that other states could pass similar laws to restrict such seizures.
The Connecticut dispute was a test of government power versus individual rights, pitting a community's hopes for economic rebirth against the rights of an individual -- in this case a nurse named Susette Kelo -- to keep her home.
The case turned on the provision in the Constitution that says the government may take private property "for public use" so long as it pays the owner "just compensation."
Originally, "public use" meant the land was to be used by the public, such as for a road, canal, military base or government building. In the 19th century, railroads were permitted to take private lands because they served the public. Then in the mid-20th century, the court said officials could condemn homes and stores in "blighted" areas as part of a redevelopment plan. That helped spawn an era of "urban renewal" across the nation.
