In the late hours of the night last night, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a billed aimed at reversing the effect of the Supreme Court’s June decision in Kelo v. City of New London, which allowed private property to be taken for use by developers.
WASHINGTON — Contending that the Supreme Court has undermined a pillar of American society, the sanctity of the home, the House overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday to block the court-approved seizure of private property for use by developers.
The bill, passed 376-38, would withhold federal money from state and local governments that use powers of eminent domain to force businesses and homeowners to give up their property for commercial uses.
(….)
The legislation is the latest, and most far-reaching, of several congressional responses to the court ruling. The House previously passed a measure to bar federal transportation money from going for improvements on land seized for private development. The Senate approved an amendment to a transportation spending bill applying similar restrictions. The bill now moves to the Senate, where Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has introduced companion legislation.
Personally, I would prefer a Constitutional Amendment limiting the eminent domain power of the federal, state, and local governments. I find this use of Congress’s “power of the purse” disturbing in its implications for federalism. In essence, it is fudamentally the same as the laws that Congress has passed to coerce states into raising the drinking age or passing mandatory seat-belt laws.
Such laws are destructive of federalism and further erode the line between Federal power and local power. While I applaud the result that this law is likely to have, I cannot agree with the method by which it is being accomplished.
