</em>Guest Blogger: Class Warfare and <em>Kelo</em></em>

By Doug Kendall, Founder and Executive Director Community Rights Counsel
The most devastating charge leveled by the dissenting Justices in Kelo v. New London - the allegation that the Court's opinion will benefit the rich over the poor, the powerful over the powerless - is also the one that falls farthest from the mark. Indeed, it is result advocated by the principle dissent in Kelo, which would sanction economic redevelopment only where "blight" is shown, that would most concentrate the impact of eminent domain on the impoverished and the powerless.
It is true, of course, that most economic redevelopment projects take place in the nation's poorest areas. The very purpose of these projects is to provide jobs and hope to areas plagued by desolation and despair. The promise of these projects to bring opportunity and community to impoverished areas is what convinced the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Berman v. Parker to rule that economic redevelopment of blight stricken areas was a public use, justifying the government's use of eminent domain.
To the extent eminent domain is used disproportionately against minorities and the poor, it is the direct result of Berman. But the plaintiffs in Kelo did not challenge Berman, and the four Kelo dissenters all joined Justice O'Connor's opinion, which forcefully defends the use of eminent domain for blight removal.
The Kelo case rose all the way to the Supreme Court only because the properties condemned for the economic redevelopment project pursued by New London were not designated as blighted. The white, middle-class plaintiffs in Kelo argued that blight had to be shown in order to justify economic redevelopment as a Constitutional "public use." If the Court had sided with the property-owners in Kelo, the result would have been that eminent domain for economic redevelopment could only have been justified by the poverty of the area condemned.
The majority in Kelo wisely rejected this argument. The term "public use" looks forward towards the use to be put of the property taken, not backwards towards the existing use of the property. If increasing economic opportunity is a public use for blighted property, the Court ruled, it can also be an appropriate basis for eminent domain where blight is not present.
There are important questions about the disproportionate impact that eminent domain can have on the impoverished and the politically powerless. For example, compensation for the displaced at times seems less than fair, particularly for those who rent, rather than own, property in areas condemned. We should make sure that all members of the community are treated fairly as economic redevelopment projects go forward.
But those questions were not raised by the Kelo case, and the answer proposed by Justice O'Connor, which would have exempted the middle class from the use of eminent domain for economic redevelopment, would have made it less, not more, likely that the political process will ensure that eminent domain is employed in a way adequately protects this country's most vulnerable citizens.