Remember when all of the leftist SCOTUS justices and along with Kennedy voted to approve this travesty? The happy ending to this story? There is none except several states enacting law to stop this kind of theft, and OBTW, Pfizer came, exhausted its subsidies, then departed, leaving a vacant lot where the pink house once stood.
Kelo unsuccessfully fought the theft of her property in state court, with the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling in favor of New London in March 2004. The Institute for Justice took Kelo’s case to the Supreme Court, arguing on her and other families behalf before justices in February 2005.
Just four months later, on June 23, 2005, the Supreme Court released its opinion in the case, deciding in favor of New London by redefining the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to expand “public use” to include economic development purposes. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion for the majority, and he was joined by Court’s three other progressives. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court’s crucial swing vote, sided with the majority in a concurring opinion.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote a scathing dissent in the case, which was joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”
“The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result,” she added.
In a separate but equally scathing dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas blasted the majority’s “perverse” opinion, writing that the “consequences of today's decision are not difficult to predict, and promise to be harmful.”
“Allowing the government to take property solely for public purposes is bad enough, but extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities,” Thomas explained. “Those communities are not only systematically less likely to put their lands to the highest and best social use, but are also the least politically powerful.”
The ramifications of Kelo were almost immediately felt. In the June 2006 report, Opening the Floodgates: Eminent Domain Abuse in the Post-Kelo World, the Institute for Justice noted that “
