EMINENT DOMAIN U.S. high court ruling curtailed by state justices

Cities nationwide have passed laws recently to protect homeowners.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that a Cincinnati suburb cannot take private property by eminent domain for a $125 million project of offices, shops and restaurants, finding that economic development isn't a sufficient reason under the state constitution to justify taking homes.
The case was the first challenge of property rights laws to reach a state high court since the U.S. Supreme Court last summer allowed municipalities to seize homes for use by a private developer.
The case involves the city of Norwood, which used its power of eminent domain to seize properties holding out against private development in an area considered to be deteriorating.
In the ruling, Justice Maureen O'Connor said cities may consider economic benefits but that courts deciding such cases in the future must "apply heightened scrutiny" to assure private citizens' property rights.
"For the individual property owner, the appropriation is not simply the seizure of a house," she wrote. "It is the taking of a home -- the place where ancestors toiled, where families were raised, where memories were made,"
Targeting property because it is in a deteriorating area also is unconstitutional because the term is too vague and requires speculation, the court found.
O'Connor wrote that the court attempted in its decision to balance "two competing interests of great import in American democracy: the individual's rights in the possession and security of property, and the sovereign's power to take private property for the benefit of the community."
Property rights' advocates, business groups and backers of city planning were watching the Ohio case because of the precedent it could set. The ruling comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in a case from New London, Conn., that cities can take land for shopping malls or other private development.
Two Norwood couples claimed the city was misusing its power of eminent domain -- the authority to buy and take private property for public projects such as highways -- for the project.
No isolated case
Dana Berliner, an attorney for the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for Justice, which represented property owners in the case, said Wednesday's decision will have ramifications in high courts and legislatures across the country.
"This case is really part of a trend throughout the country of states responding to and rejecting the U.S. Supreme Court's Kelo decision last year," she said. "There are now 28 states that have taken legislative steps to protect owners more after that decision, and this case is the next movement in that trend, and I believe now not only Legislatures but other courts are going to begin rejecting that terrible decision."
Berliner called Norwood emblematic of development trends across the country.
"This was a perfect example of what is going on all over the country: a perfectly nice, working class neighborhood with no tax delinquencies, no falling down buildings, a nice neighborhood of homes and businesses, that a developer thought could be much more profitable as an upscale shopping and high-end housing center," she said. "Under Ohio's vague laws, the standards Norwood applied in seizing these homes, could be applied to any neighborhood in Ohio."
She said the decision will prevent cities from using the promise of future taxes and jobs to take homes.
Norwood officials deferred comment until a news conference scheduled for later Wednesday.