Columbus, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that economic development isn’t a sufficient reason under the state constitution to justify taking homes.
The decision put a halt to a $125 million project of offices, shops and restaurants in a Cincinnati suburb – a project that officials said would create jobs and add tax revenue.
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.
“For the individual property owner, the appropriation is not simply the seizure of a house,” Justice Maureen O’Connor wrote in a case that pitted the city of Norwood against two couples trying to save their homes.
“It is the taking of a home – the place where ancestors toiled, where families were raised, where memories were made.”
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.
Norwood wanted to use its power of eminent domain – the authority to buy and take private property for public projects such as highways – to seize properties holding out against private development in an area considered to be deteriorating.
In the ruling, 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.
Targeting property because it is in a deteriorating area also is unconstitutional because the term is too vague and requires speculation, the court found.
