“Case
Law Accumulates Implementing the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized
Persons Act” - PRFA News
Brief, March 2005
Churches and synagogues are bucking zoning and eminent domain
by using the new federal law known as RLUIPA to defend their
right to build edifices for worship and religious education and
to practice their religion in various locations.
“Connecticut’s Highest Court Kicks Homeowners
Out For Private Development”
- March 2004
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on March 3, 2004 that
the New London Development Corp. could take private houses for
a privately owned hotel and conference center, marina and upscale
housing.
“Conservative and Liberal Senators Jointly Sponsor
Bill to Protect Property Owners from Eminent Domain” (PRFA, June 2002)
N.Y. State Senate Bill S.7192
Reform of Eminent Domain Notification
March 2001:
“Lawsuits
Attack Property Seizures—Institute Campaigns Against Condemnations
to Transfer Property to Private Owners”
Lawsuits against New Rochelle, N.Y,; Port
Chester, N.Y.; North Hempstead, N.Y.; The Empire State Development
Corporation; Pittsburgh, Penna.; New London, Conn.; and Atlantic
City, N.J. against eminent domain to take property from little
guys for preferred private owners.
February 2001:
“Montgomery,
Pennsylvania, Plans to Condemn Property for a Trail after it
Loses Lawsuit Against Owners”
See Also
Additional Resources
Counteract the Kelo v. New London decision
“Model Resolution by local
Government to Enact a Town Policy and to Petition the State Legislature
to Protect Private Property Owners, Including Homeowners and
Small Businesses, from Eminent Domain for Economic Development”
- PRFA July 2005
Uniform Relocation Act
Federal Highway Administration
“The Uniform
Act applies when Federal dollars are utilized in any phase of
a project. The Uniform Act applies even when Federal dollars
are not used specifically for property acquisition or relocation
activities, but are used elsewhere in the project, such as in
planning, environmental assessments or construction.”
- “Real Estate Acquisition Guide for Local Public
Agencies,” Essential guidebook for the property owner
available from U.S. Dept. of Transportation, Federal Highway
Administration (p. 2). See web site:
link
“The Freedom of Information Request” (With Sample Letter) - By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA
Background Brief, December 2004)
Knowledge is the first key to success in defending private
property rights. Although based on New York and federal freedom
of information law, this article has important information applicable
anywhere in the United States.
Additional Helpful
Organizations
Institute for Justice
(a non-profit legal foundation
that defends freedom, is representing property owners in New
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other areas where cities
are using eminent domain to take property from small businesses
and homeowners to transfer it to their private businesses, such
as hotels and upscale stores.)
address
Institute
for Justice
Castle Coalition
deep
qt — EDA’s Follies: Part One
Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff investigates eminent domain
abuse, starting with Park South, Albany, N.Y.
Begging for Billionaires
A Documentary about Eminent Domain
A Limelight Cinema Group Production: Philip Klein - Director/Producer;
Robert Vollrath - Assistant Director;
Dan Polsfuss - Editor;
Mark Vollrath - Rough Editor; Music by the Washington Squares
Visit: www.beggingforbillionaires.com
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- “National Property
Rights Ombudsman Bill Announced” — U.S. Senator
Orrin Hatch, Press Release, Sandy, Utah, July 5, 2005
The “Empower Act” would apply the
Utah model of a State Property Rights Ombudsman to the federal
government, to inform people of their rights and actively work
to help property owners to take full advantage of their rights.
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In-Depth Information
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 “Testimony By Carol W. LaGrasse,
President, Property Rights Foundation of America, Before the
Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the
Natural Resources Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives
Regarding H. R. 1286, Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route
National Historic Trail Designation Act, October 30, 2007”
The proposed 600-mile Washington-Rochambeau Historic Trail
through nine states from Rhode Island to Virginia poses a threat
to private property rights because of the National Park Service’s
pattern of secrecy, lack of true public participation, piecemeal
development, use of municipalities and non-profit agencies as
false fronts, and use of eminent domain (directly, indirectly
through local municipalities, and later to widen trails). Amendments
to H.R. 1286 are proposed to eliminate these deficiencies.
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 “Twenty-First
Century Carpetbaggers and Privateers: The Booty is Your Property”
- By Marshall Sayegh, Community Leader, Gualala, California,
Eleventh Annual National Conference on Private Property Rights
(PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 13, 2007)
Today, privateering is a way of mobilizing groups of people
and resources to take private property rights. When faced with
an illogical utility route that threatened their businesses,
the Gualala Commercial Property Owners defended their private
property rights by organizing and speaking out, again and again.
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- “Congressional
Legislation Would Thwart Effects of Kelo Decision”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse, PRFA, July 25, 2007
Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner and Maxine Waters introduced
federal legislation in July to rein in the effects of the Supreme
Court’s Kelo v. New London decision allowing
the use of eminent domain to take property from one private party
to transfer it to another private party for economic development.
The Property Rights Protection Act of 2007 (H.R. 3053) would
hold back federal funds for economic development where eminent
domain was used. However, the bill contains two exceptions allowing
eminent domain for economic development for an immediate threat
to public health and safety and to acquire abandoned property
that create a dangerous, open-ended exception for “blight,”
which should be deleted before the bill garners support.
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 “Eminent
Domain-Where We Are, Where We’ve Been, & Where We Should
Be Going”- By Gideon Kanner, Professor of Law Emeritus,
Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, Tenth Annual National Conference
on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 14, 2006)
Eminent domain is the dark corner of the law. There is no
“public use” requirement increasingly
in eminent domain, and the “just compensation”
is concededly unjust. The legal development of private eminent
domain took several key turns in American jurisprudence, but
the big problem surfaced in the Berman case in 1954 in
Washington, D.C. Eminent domain for redevelopment in New York
involves favored, wasteful, big money deals.
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 “The Eminent
Domain Crisis” - By James E. Morgan, Esq., Principal,
Galvin & Morgan, Counselors at Law, Delmar, N.Y., Tenth Annual
National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany,
N.Y., October 14, 2006)
Eminent domain is being abused by circumventing New York’s
Enabling Act. The Fifth Amendment right to compensation for a
taking of private property is being denied with the government’s
imposition of transferable development rights for valuable property
in the Long Island Pine Barrens, and with the use of zoning and
smart growth regulation.
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 “Update
on Property Rights in the U.S. Congress”-By Jason Knox,
Staffer, Resources Committee, U.S. House of Representatives,
Tenth Annual National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA,
Albany, N. Y., October 14, 2006)
Rep. Sensenbrenner’s eminent domain reform bill
(H.R. 4128) died in the Senate. Rep. Chabot’s bill
to enable property owners to bring Fifth Amendment takings cases
into federal court (H.R.4772) would overcome the requirement
that state remedies be exhausted and the ironic application of
res judicata. Eminent domain due process reform would eliminate
the bulk of federal condemnation abuse.
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 “Private
Property Rights—Freedom in the Balance” -Keynote
Address by John Fund, The Wall Street Journal, Tenth Annual
National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany,
N.Y., October 14, 2006)
“Often the best template by which to judge a member of
Congress is not whether they have an R or D behind their name,
not whether they say they are a conservative or say they are
a liberal, but what their philosophical impulses are towards
Kelo.”
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- “A History
of Government Theft” - By Sarah Foster, April 2006,
Reprinted from Whistleblower by permission of WorldNetDaily.com,
publisher.
The U. S. Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London
ruling was not the beginning of the abuse of eminent domain to
destroy communities for private development. It began in Washington,
D.C., during the 1950s, where slum clearance was the excuse for
cruelly displacing 20,000 residents, mainly families from good
homes, others people in scattered poor conditions, who suffered
especially, and even died, from the evictions.
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- “Write for
Property Rights — Act Now, After Kelo, A Time of
Outrage and Opportunity” - By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA,
January 2006)
The State Senate hearing at the Capitol left the impression
that delaying action on eminent domain could be used to diffuse
the outrage over the Kelo v. New London ruling. A revised
definition of blight might lull citizens into false security.
But Senator DeFrancisco has a bill to restore constitutional
limits to eminent domain and he and Assemblyman Brodsky have
proposed that condemnation by authorities be approved by elected
bodies.
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 “National
Property Rights Ombudsman Legislation” - By Craig M.
Call, Utah State Property Rights Ombudsman Speech to the Ninth
Annual National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA,
Albany, N.Y., October 22, 2005)
The Utah Property Rights Ombudsman has successfully acted
as a neutral third party to make sure that people have straight
answers to the questions that they face in land use and eminent
domain situations involving state and local government. “I
try to make the law work better for individuals who call me,”
said Mr. Call. U. S. Senator Orrin Hatch has proposed legislation
for a federal property rights ombudsman within the Department
of Transportation.
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 “Eminent
Domain Reforms at Every Level” - By Steven D. Anderson,
Castle Coalition, Institute for Justice, Speech to the Ninth
Annual National Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA,
Albany, N.Y., October 22, 2005)
The majority’s point in Kelo v. New London
that it must defer to a state deliberative body on the meaning
of the Constitution borders on lunacy. Its point that state laws
requiring some type of plan protect property owners from an overreaching
government confirms the Court’s detachment from reality.
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 “Local
Citizen Organizing to Defeat Eminent Domain” - By Michael
Cristofaro, Resident of the condemned Fort Trumbull neighborhood
of New London, Speech to the Ninth Annual National Conference
on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany, N.Y., October 22,
2005)
The Cristofaro family gave up their first house to eminent
domain, supposedly for a levee, but a private development was
built there instead. They refused to move when the City’s
New London Redevelopment Agency condemned their second home,
and fought their way to the U. S. Supreme Court, where their
case, Kelo v. New London, was defeated. Michael Cristofaro
speaks about the injustice of eminent domain at every opportunity
and is campaigning for the City Council.
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- “U.S.
Supreme Court: Administrative State is King - Chilling Kelo
v. New London Decision Dashes Trust in Top Court”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, July 2005)
As long as government has a plan, it may condemn private property
to transfer it to another private party. The literal meaning
of “public use” in the Takings Clause
of the Fifth Amendment is rejected, replaced with the broader
meaning of “public purpose.” The ruling
strengthens a trend to the sovereign administrative state in
several recent Supreme Court Rulings, most recently Gonzales
v. Raich and U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Securities and
Exchange Commission.
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- “Rise Up - A Call to Regain
Private Property Rights After Kelo v. New London”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse, (PRFA, July 2005)
Each of us should take on the task of counteracting the U.
S. Supreme Court’s Susette Kelo v. City of New
London decision. We must use our influence on local government
and the state legislature to prohibit eminent domain to take
property from one private owner to transfer it to another private
person for the purpose of economic development.
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 Kelo
v. City of New London:
“Private
Property At The Mercy Of Government” - By John McClaughry,
Ethan Allen Institute, Reprinted by Permission. (This article
appeared in most Vermont newspapers shortly after the ruling.)
According to the June 23, 2005 ruling of the U.S. Supreme
Court in Kelo v. New London, government can take the property
of A by eminent domain and turn it over to B whenever it thinks
that B will pay more in taxes.
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 “The Rampant
Injustice of Eminent Domain” - By Nate Dickinson (PRFA,
November 14, 2004)
Review of Abuse of Power—How the Government Misuses Eminent
Domain by Steven Greenhut (Seven Locks Press 2004)
Master planners are using “blight”
declarations and urban redevelopment to sack neighborhoods in
a nationwide nightmare of eminent domain. People are fighting
back to protect their private property rights.
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 “Eminent Domain
Law” - Office of Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky. Presented
by Jim Malatras, Legislative Director, Eighth Annual National
Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Oct. 23, 2004)
People across the ideological spectrum have joined Mr. Brodsky
to successfully reform New York’s eminent domain
law, requiring notification of individual property owners. More
reform lies ahead.
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 “Root Shock—How
Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America and What We Can Do
About It” - By Dr. Mindy Fullilove, New York State Psychiatric
Institute and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Public Health
at Columbia University, New York, New York; Speech to the Eighth
Annual Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA, Albany,
N. Y. October 23, 2004)
People love the buildings they live in and their neighborhoods.
When urban renewal destroyed 1,600 African American neighborhoods
in the fifties and sixties, the losses were horrific. The black
people called it “Negro removal.” Vibrant
neighborhoods were lost. Nine out of ten jazz clubs died.
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- “Challenges
to Our Vision” - By Carol W. LaGrasse, Welcome Address,
Eighth Annual N.Y. Conference on Private Property Rights (PRFA,
Oct. 23, 2004)
With our conviction for private property rights, we can counteract
the do-gooders who are using environmental schemes to force rural
people off their land and using eminent domain to destroy downtown
urban neighborhoods.
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 “Dispossessed”
- By Susan Allen (PRFA, September 2004)
Book Reviews: Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods
Hurts America and What We Can Do About It by Dr. Mindy Thompson
Fullilove and Mists of the Couchsacrage: Rescue from State
Land by Alden L. Dumas
Dr. Mindy Fullilove’s Root Shock captures
the mid-20th-century horror of loss of home in her documentation
of urban renewal. The story Mists of the Couchsacrage
by Alden L. Dumas is haunted by the banished hunting camps destroyed
by New York State’s insatiable lust for wilderness,
which it creates by eliminating the rural culture.
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- “Foul
Ball - My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ballpark”
- by Jim Bouton (Bulldog Publishing 2003), Reviewed by Nathaniel
R. Dickinson (PRFA, February 6, 2004)
The great New York Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton led a battle
to save treasured Wahconah Park, in Pittsfield, Mass., one of
the oldest in America, having hosted professional baseball since
1892. Bouton narrates how he brought the community together against
a new government-financed stadium, battling the City Council,
which could wield eminent domain. Dickinson draws a parallel
to the Nets stadium proposed for Brooklyn, N.Y.
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 “Eminent
Domain for Private Gain”- By Dana Berliner, Keynote
Address, Seventh Annual New York Conference on Private Property
Rights (PRFA, October 18, 2003)
Eminent Domain is being widely abused to benefit private parties.
New York is the worst state in the country for abusing the power
of eminent domain. Where the courts are hostile, creative citizen
activists defeat eminent domain.
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- “Willing
Seller Willing Buyer - Park Service Version” - by Bo
W. Thott, 1993. (Unique survey of sellers, reprinted by permission
of Bo W. Thott, Washington County Alliance, Cutler, Maine)
Private landowners ostensibly selling to the National Park
Service are not bona fide sellers but are giving up title to
escape the legal expenses of a foredoomed battle against condemnation.
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