We know Sotomayor is a liberal on civil rights issues, but what about the civil right to protection of your property? Not surprisingly, it does not appear she will be much of an advocate for property rights, at least based on her decision in Didden v. Village of Port Chester. I would describe Didden as a step beyond the roundly hated Kelo case because it implicitly approved condemnation undertaken to benefit a private party where the local government clearly allowed itself to be used as a tool of of a private redeveloper. The City condemned a private property where the owners had proposed to develop a drug store after the property owners refused an extortive demand of the redeveloper for a payment of $800,000 or a 50 percent partnership interest. See a good discussion of the case on this blog. It seems, post Kelo, any action authorized by a government is, by definition a valid public purpose. That kind of government power is scary.
Filed under: Current Events
